A Wooly Costume

Simple Sheep Costume

So I dressed up as a sheep one Halloween. The homemade costume went down a treat. I purchased some cushion stuffing from my local fabric shop for a small price. I then stuck it in layers to a nightdress using pva glue. This took a long time and was incredibly messy. I was lucky that my friends helped out. I also stuffed some of the left over stuffing under the nightdress to give me a more rounded shape. A friend of mine lent me her hood from her wet suit and that coupled with a lot of black facepaint transformed me into a sheep. My ears suck and should of been made of fabric or black card not corrugated cardboard painted with the face paint! I also put face paint on my arms but I'd advise wearing a long sleeve black top.  

Considering the Irish weather this would of a great costume for a kid going trick or treating as they will stay warm. However, I was indoors and burning up! There wasn't a chance I was going to nightclub in it. Also the stuffing was surprisingly heavy and gave me a sore back. But overall it was a pretty practical costume. I was happy :) Also the shaply figure I had was not intentional it was simply caused by resting my arms or holding a drink.

I'd also like to mention another fine costume from the party I attended that year. One of my friends dressed up as Duff Man from the Simpsons. Why was it such a good costume? Well if I remember it correctly her purchased it all in Pennies and took the cans from the bin so it probably didn't cost more than 20 euro to make which is what I like to hear!

Sheep and Duffman Costume

Cookie Monster Cake!

Simple Cookie Monster Cake

My friends and I like making novelty cakes for eachother's birthdays that have some connection with that person. The themes can be quite obvious or totally obscure. One of my friends loves the Cookie Monster so it was easy to sort his cake out since there are plenty of examples on-line of Cookie Monster cakes and cupcakes, such as this site Coolest Birthday Cakes which has loads of examples of novelty cakes. You might see a few of mine there. The cake is simply a normal chocolate sponge which had been allowed to cool. 

Firstly, we poured melted chocolate onto the top of the cake and let it set a bit. The eyes are Jacobs Coconut Creams which are a marshmallow biscuit. They were stuck onto the cake with melted chocolate. Then to complete the eyes Cadbury's Chocolate Buttons were stuck on with a bit of melted chocolate. Note that his eyes are wonky on purpose. Then with a knife the shape of the mouth was outlined in the chocolate. 

The icing is buttercream icing with alot of blue food colouring and more icing sugar than usual to get the stiff peaks. Possibly half a bottle of colouring maybe more. In order to get the fur like texture a piping syringe with a star cap was used. I started at the bottom and worked around in layers so that the icing wouldn't slide downwards. Just after I'd squeezed the icing on I'd push the syringe into the icing and then pull away. This stopped the icing from being pulled off the cake as the syringe was pulled away. This resulted in neat peaks. 

Finally to finish it off we placed a cookie and some crumbled cookie in his mouth. Due to the large amount of food colouring in the icing no one could stomach it! The icing was very bitter so be warned sometimes it is better to buy colouring paste in order to get the right colour or it won't taste great.