Anitabot.com

October Round-Up

I haven’t mentioned enough how much I love fall. October is a standout month due to Thanksgiving and Halloween.

This Thanksgiving I hosted at my mom’s house for my family and my in-laws. Cooking at someone else’s house is always a challenge. I don’t know where everything is kept and their tools aren’t the same as mine. One thing that made up for all of this was my mom’s AWESOME CONVECTION OVEN. Holy crap! I’ve never cooked in a convection oven before and I don’t ever want to go back. The 17.5lb turkey took 2.5hrs to cook fully, instead of the 4.5-5 hours it would normally take. Combine the ultra-quick cooking time with my brine made for the absolute juciest turkey I have ever had.

Like always, I forgot to take pics after the first hour of prep so I don’t have finished shots. Here are some pics of the prep:

Turkey ready for brine

Martha Stewart's Turkey Brine

I used this recipe from Martha Stewart for the brine. It’s pretty amazing, except I think the amount of water she has in there is wrong. Water can only dissolve so much salt. Nevertheless, it was easy to add a few extra cups and everything turned out fine. I used my iPad extensively. Last time I made turkey dinner I used my laptop. The good thing about the laptop was the conversion widget. However, getting gross food stuffs in the keyboard was not good. That is where the iPad excelled.

Everyone loved the dinner and I was happy with that. Though I’m definitely going to need a break from making such a huge meal.

The other highlight of course is Halloween! Admittedly, this year I wasn’t feeling it as much as previous years. I still took part. I attended a Zombie make-up work shop at Complections school of make-up artistry. It was a demonstration but I paid the extra $45 to get the make-up kit. It was totally worth it. I did the make-up for my sister-in-law, her room mate and boyfriend for the Toronto Zombie Walk! Here are pics of them:

Zombie the first

Zombie the second

Zombie the third

I also did the make up a week later for my friend and Hubby. I myself went in the exact opposite direction and dressed up as the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Had a good time and lots of candy!

Zombies

White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

All in All, I had a great October.  It’s just a few days into November and it’s shaping up to be a great one, too.

Tags: cooking, cooky wooky club, dinner, fall, halloween, make-up, october, thanksgiving, zombies

Halloween brings out the crafter in us all.

Somehow October flew by me at unprecedented speeds, and because of this I didn’t have a lot of time to hype myself up for it. The pressure of trying to put together a costume and something to bring to the work bakesale probably helped me with my creativity. With no time to languish in creative-thinking hell, I set straight to it.

Firstly, my Halloween costume:

Rabbid & Manny Calavera

That is me as a Rabbid (from Rayman Raving Rabbids fame), and my boyfriend as Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango.  I wore this to work but did not win any costume prizes. However, I got some wonderful responses while out on the street and was in more than a few strangers photos! I’d love to see them, but have no way of finding them. If you were out near kensington in Toronto and took a pic of/with me I’d love to see it!

This is what I used to make the costume:

• Posterboard
• Felt
• Acrylic Paint
• Styrofoam balls
• leggings/leg warmers
• and old shirt
• papier mache (over a balloon)
• a lot of moxie (and tape)

Basically I created a large tube to sit on my shoulders out of the posterboard, cut out an area for the face and taped it up. Then I stuck an inflated balloon into the top and papier mache’d over it so the dome would be joined to the tube. I used sharpies and paint on the eyes, and the same for the mouth/face area.  It’s a bit hard to see but I did even have a plunger! Bwaaah!

The other craft item I made was the Pumpkin Cake:

Pumpkin-o-lantern Cake

It was made using 2 betty crocker cake mixes (French Vanilla for the Pumpkin, Chocolate for the dirt patch), home made cream cheese frosting + a can of store bought chocolate frosting, oreo cookie crumbs and fondant.

Using a sphere cake pan, we carved out the shape of a pumpkin, covered it with fondant and used the end of a knife to score the lines. We added the stem and the vine and put it on the the base, which was covered in oreo cookie crumbs for the ‘dirt’ effect. It was my first time covering a cake and fondant and I think it worked so well because pumpkins are lumpy by nature.

I’ve decided that I need to craft something once a month. Since there are no major holidays in November, I’m not sure where my inspiration will come from but hopefully I’ll find it.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween 2008!

I haven’t written in a while and that is because of the amount of prepparation Hallowen required. It was well worth it!

My work takes Halloween so seriously… more so than any other place I know of.  We had a costume contest, a pumpkin carve-off, a bake sale and a candy cart! It was hard to focus.

Here’s a pic of my costume in it’s full glory:

This is how you dance in space

And a picture of the graveyard cake I baked for the bakesale:

Most delicious graveyard I've ever eaten

aaaaand the Pumpkin we carved for the Pumpkin Carve-off at work:

No mercy for gourds in Pumpkin Hell

My pumpkin-carving team was my co-worker Jess, our boss Libby and Pau, the Tech manager dude. It was great! We had 40 minutes to do this. Libby brought her dremmel tool and the little gourds. We carved up the little ones and each little gourd had a tea light in it. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but I know ours was technically the best as far as carving went.

I handed out Candy at Jess’ house and the highlight was seeing a kid dressed up as “Indiana Bones”. We went to the supermarket in Kensington and had a good time too, despite some douchery.

Something about halloween + drinking + skanks = douchery. It’s inevietable but we didn’t let it get us donw!

I had so much fun! Now that it’s all over, I’ve taken down the halloween edition of anitabot – but don’t worry there will be another.

See the rest of my Halloween pictures here!

Tags: baking, cake, costume, graveyard cake, halloween

Halloween music.

In preparations for the most glorious of holidays, I have selected my commute music to match. I have gone through a few Misfits albums, and 1 White Zombie album (Astro-Creep 2000). I wondered if I could sustain an entire months commute with soley Halloween-themed, horror-related music.

The mis...fits???

I prefer whole albums to play lists, but I will make an exception for some key songs.

Outside of the Misfits and White Zombie (and Rob Zombie, of course)… what else is there? Ministry? Specifically “Everyday is Halloween”?  Maybe the Cure? Marilyn Manson? All the Danny Elfman soundtracks I own? Helloween (and subsequently all other forms of blacker than the blackest black times infinity metal)? I’m sure there’s tons out there that I could listen to… but I’m having troubles thinking of it. So I implore you, dear reader – tell me of some good Halloween themed bands I can listen to!! I have 21 days of commuting to do!  Which means I would probably need around 40 albums. Eek! That’s a ton!

Start commenting!

Tags: halloween, misfits, music