Sometimes, if I am very quiet, I can feel my fat cells expanding.

Honestly, I wish I were kidding.

Sometimes, when you’ve been eating cream filled cakes cakes and croissants filled with honeyed ham and gruyere cheese, all in the guise of tasting or a delectable dish of butter poached marron wafts your way, well you would have to be a stronger soul than I to resist.

And coming up  - can you hear the theme for Jaws – Christmas is definitely a time when we tend to eat a bit more. So what’s the best strategy for it? Wearing a tight dress or belt in one way-leave the expandable waists at home unless of course you care not a jot, and take along my envy with you please

I treasure all of my readers and one long time reader is Joanne who leaves me lovely comments every day and sends me interesting things to make. Originally from America, she now lives in Australia and is a cake enthusiast and one day she shared her profile on Food.com with me. I looked a bit further into it and saw that one of her most popular items was her mum Joan’s spice cake.

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Dear Reader, it’s that most wonderful time of the year. No, not Christmas, which is all very well and jolly but the favourite holiday for ghouls, ghosts and goblins! Where I get to indulge my scary, dark side and instead of making things that are pretty, I strive for ghoulishly ugly!

This year, I almost had a self induced nervous breakdown when I decided to make Hogwarts Castle in gingerbread. While assembling it, I rang Mr NQN and literally could not string together a sentence. He answered the phone and there was a few seconds of silence before I stammered out “hebeller…nana…ahhhhh.” He wasn’t too concerned, I do this kind of thing probably more often that is normal but when he asked “are you ok?” I mumbled “alright…” and then hung up.

After a cup of tea and some chocolate, I surveyed my to make list for the event which we held this past Saturday night in our apartment that Mr NQN keeps telling me fits fewer people than I had invited. I decided to do easy to prepare things, as a way to avoid another breakdown and I promise you – witchy swear in fact, that everything on this story is easy with a couple easy to medium level with a little bit of low level crafting. All designed in order to lower stress. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t spooktacular by any means, but if I can find a way to make things easier, I will.

As always, we got our decorations from fellow Hallowe’en lovers, The Party People (where else will you find a moving, talking marble bust?) and put up my favourite Hallowe’en mascots-the wall of flying bats who look over our Halloween parties every year. We donned our costumes-I as Morticia Addams and Mr NQN as Count Von Finlandia and let us welcome you into our Hallowe’en party! And scroll down to the bottom to see my ghoulish guests!

Morticia Addams here, I don’t often eat much as I have to slip into a slinky black dress every day but this coffin dip is just the ticket if you are wanting a healthy dip. Pugsley doesn’t like to eat it unless I tell him that it isn’t in fact peas, but slime. And I think this little skeleton was the belle of the ball. He looks like he is having a great time but wouldn’t you if you had escaped your coffin?

Someone once said two heads were better than one. How about half a dozen shrunken heads instead? Even better! These little heads were the perfect accessory for my hot mulled apple rum toddy. And as Morticia, I can tend to be be as pushy as Lorraine and suggest that if you make one thing this Hallowe’en, it’s this! Just use the best of everything you can find darlings…

When I was preparing a cauliflower one day, it struck me how brain like it was. I had all intentions to make two of these but when I got home and realised that one of the cauliflowers that I had picked up at the market had bugs through it all, I thought that I had better throw that out. I mean faux bugs are fine but people tend to label you weird if you serve them actual bugs.

Sometimes you do something and it grosses people out a bit too much. Well apparently Freddy’s glove scared a few people and they didn’t know that underneath it all was just a meatloaf. It’s harmless-just like me!

She doesn’t look happy that everyone is whispering behind her back. What she doesn’t know is that they’re trying to figure out how to nab a Voodoo Doll cookie without madam noticing! Oh btw this is Morticia Senior.

I bought a jar of these little bockwurst sausages a few months before and kept them on my desk for the entire time. Looking at them made me smile – no, don’t be naughty! They made me smile because they reminded me that Halloween was coming up!

Have you ever wondered where spiders come from? From ginormous eggs! Well, only if they are those giant mutant spiders….

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My mother in law Tuulikki is not your usual image of a mother in law. In fact my mother repeatedly tells me how lucky I am to have her as my MIL. Mr NQN and I often comment that Tuulikki often lives in a fairytale world where people are kind, wear flowing purple scarves and keep flocks of geese and herds of goats as pets. Things such as bills go missing and yet humans can subsist on a diet of music, incense and coconut oil. She retains an other-wordly air about her and should anyone nasty cross her path, she is genuinely befuddled and horrified by their behaviour. It’s quite nice really.

She also tells very funny tales of when she was young. Growing up in Finland, all she wanted was a monkey. Living in Finland, you understand is really not a natural habitat for a monkey to be found. But every Christmas and birthday would roll around and she would make dresses and skirts for her monkey which never arrived.

“They never told me that a monkey wasn’t coming. I just kept making dresses for it until I got older. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me I couldn’t have one in that climate!” she wondered to me, still slightly upset.

“How old were you when you realised that you weren’t getting a monkey?”

“Oh well, I don’t think I ever realised it…” she said trailing off, her shoulders sagging at the memory of lost monkeys.

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