Halloween celebrations in Marion

Every year on Halloween, witches, ghosts, goblins and all sorts of scary creatures and spirits will pour onto the quiet streets of Marion. It's the annual Halloween Parade and costumed characters of all ages are welcome to take part in this event.

The starting point of the parade was at the Music Hall. At 4pm, the parade which consisted of several hundreds of people and animals began down Front Street and they were led by the Sippican Styxx Drum Corps. Numerous streets were closed for the event. The short parade ended back at the Marion Music Hall where goody bags were handed out to all participants.

Check out the huge turnout!

Immediately after the parade, the trick-or-treaters began on their rounds around the entire neighbourhood. We had prepared a huge basket of yummy treats. Check out some of those spooky characters who had passed through our home.

We didn't have time to take photos of everyone 'cos we were busy giving out treats. But everyone who came through loved our treats and halloween decorations!

We had decorated our place with spider webs, real & plastic pumpkins and some lightings. It looked as if a giant spider had spun a huge web all round the house! The kids had fun trying to untangle themselves from the webs when they came for trick-or-treat.

Here's a trick AND treat from our dear neighbour - pumpkin bread, a whoopee cushion..and a beautiful hand drawn card!

Hope everyone had a lovely Halloween too!

Halloween treats...

After drooling over many of Bakerella's wonderful cakepop creations for so long....I've decided to finally make some to give away as Halloween treats. Do check out Bakerella's blog for detailed instructions on how to make these cute little pops http://www.bakerella.com/

I had used a moist chocolate cake as the base. After mixing the cake crumbs with cream cheese frosting....I rolled them into balls with my hands and stuck lollipop sticks into them.

These cuties are all lined up ready to get dressed!

Here I'm preparing the candy melts to coat the little ones....

Here they are....all dressed up in the festive color!

I've got no space in my refrigerator....so I left the little ones to harden in the deck which is the coolest part of the house (~48F).

When the candy coating had hardened, I put plastic wrap over each one and secured with black pipes.

Some chocolate coated ones for ourselves and neighbours.

Hmmm....crunchy on the outside, moist on the inside....and SUPER SWEET!

A for Apple....

Underneath an apple-tree
Sat a maiden and her lover;
And the thoughts within her he
Yearned, in silence, to discover.
Round them danced the sunbeams bright,
Green the grass-lawn stretched before them
While the apple blossoms white
Hung in rich profusion o'er them.

- Apple Blossoms [Apple Blossoms] by Will Carleton (1845-1912)

We visited the Hilltop Orchards http://www.hilltoporchards.com/index.html in Richmond to pick some apples.

Fine, I admit that I've never even seen an apple tree...not to mention picking apples from the tree! And I definitely did not know that there are SO MANY different varieties of apples. We saw 26 types of New England apples at Hilltop Orchards alone.

We purchased a small plastic carrier for $6 which allowed us to pick as many apples to fill the entire bag. There was a chart to educate us on the different apple types available.

To make identification easier, certain popular apple tree types i.e. McIntosh, IDA had been marked by colored ribbons.

As the apple farm was quite a distance from the main entrance, we were transported there in a farm tractor. See how RG was enjoying his ride!

There were so many apple trees and APPLES!!! Red ones, green ones, yellow ones, good ones, bad ones, half eaten ones.

And so I plucked a beautiful big fleshy one and offered it to RG and he took a big bite!

I absolutely couldn't resist the temptation of a huge crate of red apples and posed for a shot. Oh the vanity!

Happy Halloween

This coming Saturday is Halloween. So we decided that when in America, do as the Americans do!

We had bought 2 big pumpkins from a farmstand in Berkshires a few weeks ago....and I decided to carve them today.

As it's the first time I'm carving a pumpkin, I had selected 2 reasonably simple designs. I really wanted a fierce/scary looking pumpkin as well as a slightly cutesy one.

I think the hardest part of the pumpkin carving process is the preparation part where you need to remove the stem, scoop out the seeds and scrap out the flesh of the pumpkin. I had to use all my strength to scrap out the thick fleshy bits...so as to leave the pumpkin walls thin and easier to carve.

RG took a photo of me hard at work. Look at that big bowl of pumpkin flesh that I had scooped out.

Well, this is my very first halloween pumpkin....what do you think?

The next one is the cutesy one....can you tell what the carving is about?

We added in the candles and see how they are glowing!

The design looks clearer after putting in the candle. Yes, it's a cat AND a pumpkin face!

Now that I've got quite some pumpkin flesh and seeds leftover from the carvings, I think I'm gonna make some steamed pumpkin kueh and toasted spicy pumpkin seeds. Hmmmmm...I'm drooling already just thinking about it.