Double, double, toil and trouble

Happy Halloween! The day has finally come where it's acceptable to go out in your pjs, with bed hair and no make-up and not a single soul can judge you. Not that I'll be doing that though, just because they can't judge doesn't mean you won't get some funny looks! Instead I'm spending the day cleaning and tidying whilst Jay's at work, then we're heading out for a ghost tour of York- relevant I know. 

With Halloween comes the fun of dressing up as your alter ego and carving pumpkins, so why not dedicate a post to just that! I'm such a big kid at heart, so I take pumpkin carving very seriously. In hindsight we probably should have bought one of those over-priced pumpkin carving kits for the fiddly bits, but our ice-cream scoop and knives worked out just fine in the end. As we had three to carve, yes three, we took a pumpkin each and shared the last one. They all ended up with three different faces, but they look great next to each other. And if you're wondering, a white pumpkin is white inside but a blue pumpkin is orange and very hard to carve!

Our first Halloween event was really last night as Red Goat Climbing Wall hosted a Halloween climbing competition. I didn't climb, too much of a pansy at the moment with heights, but I did however dedicate Friday to making a budget Halloween costume. This had to be something that meant Jay could still move and climb in whilst looking spectacular. What did we opt for? A spider. I had already created this look 2 years ago, I;ll treat you to the throwback don below, so I thought it would be relatively easy to recreate. All you need is two pairs of tights + one for your legs, some fair wings, black fabric/ bin liner, old magazines/ newspapers, tape, scissors and sewing kit. Put it together and what have you got, bibbidy, bobbidy, boo. I have to say it worked out pretty damn well and he received second prize for it, result! {I bought a cat mask and tail and went for the simple but effective look}. 

I hope everyone has a spooky day and night and eats lots of Halloween treats. I'll be off getting spooked out in the dark and planning what to make with my pumpkins after today. P.S. Here's the throwback I promised you.

Pontefract, Potatoes & Pumpkins

It's safe to say I'm cream crackered. It's just gone 9 o'clock and I could quite happily go to bed right now, twenty one going on eighty. I'd be going to bed very happy though as I have a two pumpkins on my sideboard (blue and orange to be precise, yes you heard me, blue) and a bath full of potatoes- they needed to dry out and living in a flat we don't have a garden/ shed. 

Today we left the city and ventured 30 miles South to the market town of Pontefract. The town itself wasn't very market-like but we found a castle with free parking, bingo, and free entry, double bingo. After wandering round the ruins and reading every sign we drove 1.6 miles down the road Farmer Copley's farm. I don't think we were aware of how popular this place would be, but it was the first weekend of pumpkin picking so really we shouldn't have been surprised. 

Wellies would have been the most sensible footwear to trudge across a field in, but nonetheless, my not-so-white converse held up. After walking past hundreds of pumpkins we reached the main reason for our visit, the potato field. We love potatoes, any form, any kind so we were delighted to be told they had blue ones for us to pick. No, I'm not loosing my marbles we have a blue pumpkin and blue potatoes. Once we filled a basket (and I had a worm thrown in my face) we took them off to be bagged, £5 for 12.5 kilos means we won't be needing potatoes until 2016. 

Looking back we probably should have got a wheel barrow as we entered the pumpkin field, so Jay may have ended up carrying the 12.5kg worth of potatoes round as we went in search of our pumpkins. (Pay back for throwing a worm in my face really) Now, I should probably put it out there that we didn't come here in search of a pumpkin, but upon talking to a witch, a member of staff that was dressed up, we were reassured that they would last until January if we really wanted! Another half an hour later we had found the right pumpkins and took them to the checkout ready to take home. 

By this point we were starving as we hadn't eaten lunch, so we put our goodies in the car and headed down to the cafe. I chose a sausage sandwich, whilst jay had a ham and chutney sandwich with some chips to share. We then went for a browse round the farm shop, pining over the fresh produce and yummy Halloween goodies. On our way out we stopped by the animals to say hello, then headed back to the car to make our way home. It was a lovely day, and we had our first of the potatoes with tea, they were delicious!