Leaves, Cupcakes and Face Painting

No, I'm not posting more fall leaf pictures.

I'm talking about my mural. I did some more touch ups to the tree, and started my leaves!

I didn't finish the leaves, but I did outline htem in with the paint. I will go back and fill in with different green's and blues and yellows and shade them, one by one.

When you're trying to place them all, you have to step back and get perspective and I didn't want to have to stop between each leaf to get perspective. So, I placed them around and stepped back and added more. Just rough outlines.

I finished a few of them out, but not much.

I really like how the paint is matte against the wall paint. On the left you can see how it stands out.

Awesome sauce.

Middle boy turns 16 tomorrow. For his birthday he had the fireman take him out on a boy's shopping trip. They came back with bags filled with peach Snapple tea, Reese's mini's, full size Snickers and a guitar tab book.

I like the way he shops.

Then we all went out to a Chinese buffet for supper, his choice.

I took the girl to a Halloween event Saturday night. Got her all dressed up in her Victorian Vampire costume. She was super cute. She had a long sleeve top under it and leggings and boots to keep her warm. I dusted her face with light powder, red lips and black eye liner. I curled her hair in ringlets and sprayed red and black into the curls. They were super cute!

I forgot to take a picture.

Man!

But this is our trip to Target during the day. I needed to find orange and black striped tights for my costume next weekend. I found a witch costume for our Halloween party. Super fun!

I've always wanted an excuse to wear orange and black striped tights!

The fireman decided to go as Pinhead for the party. From Hellraiser.

I haven't seen it either.

He got a long gothic jacket and I'm going to do his makeup. He was sitting there watching me paint. The girl and the youngest boy were painting too.

I said, "You know, I could probably just paint your face."

He said, "With acrylics?"

"Sure, it's latex paint."

"Ok"

Bullseye!

Collin Farrell has nothing on him!

Joker smile.

Well not really, but it's scary!

Right?

I also made cupcakes on Saturday. I thought I'd be cool like Heather Cristo and make pumpkin cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes. I used her recipe's.

Well, I did make them. But....

The red velvet cupcakes didn't end up very good. They were really bitter. I've never really had real red velvet before, and from what I hear, they're supposed to taste kinda like that. I think it's all the food coloring. Maybe that's why people always put such heavy cream cheese frosting on them.

The texture was good. I just personally don't like it.

Anyway, I didn't realize they puffed up as well, so they overflowed the pans.

Not pretty. And not tasty.
At least to me.

I didn't even finish baking them, and they mostly all went into the trash. No one would eat them.

I found these cute baking wrappers at JoAnn's.

Super cute. I made a buttercream frosting.

But I used quite a bit of brown sugar to add a maply/molassesy flavor.

What? That's a word. In baking.

I can't do creative frosting styles, so I did a spiral.

And I added sprinkles.

Sprinkles make everything prettier.

Besides, I don't really like biting into two inches of frosting. I even frosted some of them with a knife, perfect amount for me. And I left a few bare.

The cupcakes were good! But they did taste a little like a pumpkin bread. They were heavily spiced and more of an adult cupcake than sweet and fluffy.

I love them.

The kids weren't crazy about them.

I think I'm going to take them in to work.

They'll appreciate all the Halloween goodness.