Spooky Glam Halloween Mantle

 I love Halloween. This year, despite being in the midst of house renos and traveling to Ottawa this weekend For Elle's birthday, we are having a party on Monday. Crazy, right? 

Of course I had to do a bit of decorating. I collaborated with my girl Sarah who is A brilliant artist to bring you some incredible pro tables. She sketched these portraits inspired by vintage kids costumes. I'm so obsessed, if they weren't seriously creepy I would keep them up. Probably not the best Christmas look though....

Here are my last minute Halloween ideas for spooky glam decor! 
  1. Baby Ghosts: grab some porcelain and/or plastic dolls and spray paint them white. 
  2. Get some cheesecloth and rip holes in it. It looks great mixed with webs. 
  3. Put a flower crown on a skull. I didn't have time to do it before I took this picture, but it would be so great, right? 
  4. Grab some frames (I love these thrifted ones from value village) and download these creepy Halloween kids. I used tiny command hooks to put them on the wall. I love them because they don't damage the paint.


Don't forget to tag #thepartyparadelife for a chance to be featured on our IG! (But mostly so I can admire your work) 
 Have a spooktacular weekend, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
xo
Mercedes
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ONE Halloween Cake - FOUR ways!



Happy almost Halloween!! Anyone who knows me, is well aware of my slight problem with indecisiveness, and I could not decide exactly how I wanted my Halloween cake to look. Shocking, I know. So we are featuring FOUR different ways to decorate your Halloween cake, from yummy, to spooky to pretty! I would love to hear which one YOU would do or like the best!

I made a secret oath to myself to never do a fondant cake ever again, and then broke it today because I just wanted that smooth, marble look...don't ask me to make another one anytime soon though. You could just purchase a cake from a baker or even the grocery store for this!

THE CAKE

 
#1
The yummy topper
I made some vanilla bean sugar cookies on lollipop sticks and iced them with royal icing in pretty pastel colours.
 
#2 
The spooky spider topper
I hot glued sparkly spiders from Wal Mart to toothpicks and stuck them in the cake
 
#3
The sugar skull topper
You could use any skull, they have them at the dollarstore! This one is also a sugar cookie that I made. Add some flowers, and you have a pretty Day of the Dead cake!
 
#4
The pretty pumpkin topper
3 mini pumpkins and a stem of greens from the grocery store floral department make for a simple, pretty fall cake!

Ok, let me know your favourite one!!

xo Nat
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Sparkle Sweet Unicorn



You know the saying,  Always be yourself, unless you can be a unicorn, then always be a unicorn? We take that quite seriously over here. I think of Ellia as my magical unicorn, a miracle baby for us, so unique, brilliant and beautiful with a sassy mind full of love and imagination, just like a unicorn. She started kindergarten this year, and I wanted to make her a special, yummy little cake to celebrate her first full week. I am SO proud of how much she has embraced the long days and how well she is thriving in class, already learning so much, I just hope she continues to sparkle. 

We have had so much love on our unicorn cake, we wanted to say thanks by showing you how simple it is to make your own!
 
 Unicorn Ears and Horn Tutorial 
Materials

Fondant
small rolling pin
silicon mat
Xacto knife
pink (or another colour) food colouring
plastic gloves
paper, pencil, scissors 
edible lustre dust (optional)

Unicorn Details
Materials

Edible markers
pink powder colouring
silk/real flowers
royal icing/buttercream flowers 

 Take out a big chunk of the fondant and kneed it to make soft. Split in half.
 Roll out both pieces on the silicon mat. Taper one end of each, to resemble a slight cone shape.
 Put a little bit of water on one side (this helps them stick together) and twist!
 For the ears, draw out an ear shape and cut out.
 Roll the fondant out on the silicon mat and then cut out with the knife.
 I made a smaller stencil for the pink part of the ear and did the same as above.
I stuck a toothpick in the horn and let it dry overnight. I also carefully put toothpicks into the ears (not shown) and then rolled up two pieces of paper towel and curved the ears in slightly and also let them dry overnight.  I used some pearl luster dust to add some dimension to the horn and ears, just mix a bit with vodka (or lemon juice I hear but have only used vodka) and paint on with a paint brush you use only for food.

The cake was baked in 3 - 6 in pans. The filling was Nutella buttercream, but you can use whatever type of cake/filling you like! Frost the outside of the cake with a crusting buttercream, I use THIS recipe. It does NOT have to be perfect! There are tons of YouTube tutorials on how to frost a cake if you haven't before :) Put it in fridge until the icing is hard. Place the horn and ears. I drew on the eyes with the black edible marker and then used the pink powder colour to lightly dust on the cheeks. Then I just made a mane of flowers and coloured some of the remaining buttercream different colours and made little flowers and drops using various decorators tips :) See, it's that easy!!

 This backdrop installation is really simple too! I just used a hula hoop,  some balloons from the dollarstore, flowers and greens. I attached the balloons with double sided tape and the greens with wire and hot glue...VOILA!
 I won this unicorn pinata from Angie's blog Little Inspiration, she made it out of a grocery store pinata, and we are kind of in love!


Since Halloween is right around the corner, I decided turn a pumpkin into a unicorn, because, if you can't be yourself...am I right? So if you think a cake is too much out of your comfort zone, why not try the pumpkin version?!



The lightbox was a gift from the Michael's Maker's Summit...a post will be coming up here about that soon!

xox Nat
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