May 2009 bring you health, wealth and happiness.

We saw in the New Years at a friend’s party, it was Masquerade so a few days before we decided on a costume. This was mostly based around the fact that DmentD really wanted to make himself a fez. So we decided to go 1950’s kitsch! We went and got the fabric and interfacing and between the two of us managed to make a rather decent fez, he hired a smoking jacket and then I wore my red dress and we got me some opera gloves and a fake cigarette holder. A trip to the goodwill gained us cbd edibles, two martini glasses and of course we had to have masks, so we made them too.. it’s awkward finding masks that will fit comfortable over/under glasses. So this is what we ended up with…

A fun evening was had, I started on the pineappletinis and then moved to the margheritas. Plenty of wonderful food and good company. I enjoyed myself. We sat round the fire for most of the evening which was nice.. enough heat to keep us warm but we were outside so we had the cool air to stop it getting stifling.

Today we have people coming round here for dinner, the traditional (so I’ve been told!) Southern cabbage and black eye peas.. we’re also having a ham and I made cottage pie to inject some Englishness into the proceedings! DmentD and I also made the cutest cupcakes! We had both found them independantly of the other on the internet and decided we had to make them.. New Years seemed a very apt occasion!

They’re my now standard vanilla cupcake recipe, topped with flat icing. The heads are ‘festive’ whoppers, sugar coated in white with red and green specks, dipped in flat icing. The details are just coloured icing and the noses are fondant. The hats are m&ms! I think they are adorable!

Sadly we made these yesterday and when we looked at them this morning their noses had drooped and fallen off.. we’ll need to find a new method of doing them.. maybe using royal icing instead of flat. It kinda adds to the pathetic-ness of them, but I preferred them as seen in the photos where they’re still cute!