How to carve a pumpkin in 15 simple steps

If you’ve never carved one before here’s how I did it (Note: these instructions worked for me, they may not work for everyone)

Step 1: Choose your pumpkin, I went for one with few blemishes and a nice round shape. I bought my carving pumpkin for £1 from our local fruit and veg shop.

Step 2: Decide on your design, simple designs are probably best. Although you think you will be able to create this

It will probably end up looking like this

Step 3: Cut out the top of your pumpkin around the stem. Make sure your hole is big enough for you to be able to scoop out the pumpkin guts.

Step 4: Start to scoop out the innards of the pumpkin with your metal cup measure. Notice you have bent your cup measure, quickly bend it back to shape, wash it and put it in the drawer so your housemates don’t know.

Step 4: Choose something else to scoop your pumpkin with. Continue to scoop with your implement and start to use your hands to assist you. Marvel at the amount of goo coming out of the pumpkin and the disturbing sounds it makes.

Step 5: Once you are satisfied with the hollowness of your pumpkin draw your image on for carving.

Step 6: Decide your pumpkin looks terrible, scrub your drawing out and start again.

Step 7: Begin carving carefully, small pieces at a time. Remind yourself your house only owns one knife so use it carefully.

Step 8: Continue carving until your pumpkin looks totally bad-ass.

Step 9: Try and work out how you will light the candles in your pumpkin. Decide to light newspaper and then light candles inside pumpkin.

Step 10: Scrape black ash out of your pumpkin as a result of the failure of step 9.

Step 11: Decide to light candle before putting it in pumpkin and lower in with tongs.

Step 12: Run finger under cold water for five minutes to relieve burn from cigarette lighter

Step 13: Successfully light candle and lower it into pumpkin. Add two more for an extra bright pumpkin.

Step 14: Place pumpkin lid back on to pumpkin stand back and admire the result.

Step 15: Clean pumpkin bits, wax and bits of burnt newspaper off kitchen floor. Place pumpkin out on the street for everyone to admire.

Zombie Zombie Zombie heya heya

On Saturday my Aussie housemate and I went out on a zombie pub crawl. It is held every year in London to raise money for the homeless charity St Mungos. It basically is as easy as it sounds, you get dressed up as a zombie and move from pub to pub.

Getting ready to go was pretty funny, we tried to convince our English housemates to come along, however they were pretty reluctant to get dressed up, although one of them agreed to meet us later “when it was dark”. We didn’t put a massive effort into our costume. £2.50 cotton tops from Primark covered in food dye and some black and white face paint from the pound store and we were set.

Traveling to the starting point on the tube was hilarious, lots of stares and comments (it was only 1pm!) we tried to smile and wave at any kids we saw so they weren’t too scared and we even got some high fives from some brave ones. We also got stopped for lots of photos. My favourite thing to do was to stand next to people at traffic lights and wait for them to notice me and freak out. It cracked me up every time. London people are funny though, they don’t acknowledge each other so it was nice to get some reactions and make people laugh.

Here are some pics of my day. The pubs were a lot of fun, very busy and crowded but it was a great friendly atmosphere.

All ready to go out with my housemate.

I love this picture, great memory of London

Dad, meet my future husband. Ha ha just kidding

My housemate and friends.

I had a lot of comments and questions about my forehead. Not sure if you can tell by the pics but I have a flap of skin hanging down, exposing a rather nasty wound.

How it was done is very simple, I didn’t use latex or anything fancy. I literally glued a couple of layers of tissue to my head using ordinary white glue. When it dried I peeled it from the top of the tissue down to about halfway. I then painted the exposed skin black, and then added red food dye (in paste form) on top. Simple! For my skin I used a mixture of white face paint and a cheap mud face mask. As the mask dried it made my skin look cracked and peeled and even more dead!

Notting Hill Carnival 2012

Yesterday I went to the Notting Hill Carnival with one of my housemates. It is called the biggest street festival in Europe but neither of us had any idea what to expect.

It was massive, loud, in your face and awesome. I had a whole lot of fun and have vowed to come back next year and get on a float.

The festival is a celebration of (mostly) Caribbean culture. There was plenty of rum (in two days they get through 25,000 bottles of it!) goat curries, jerk chicken and Jamaican stout.

It is also 50 years since the beginning of independence for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago so the celebrations were extra large.

You know the festival is going to be good when the guide they hand out tells you “if you want to have a good time drink neat rum. Don’t drink beer as you will spend all day looking for the toilet” and “if you don’t know what to do, just act as un-English as possible”

The first thing we saw, a dancing knitting granny – very cool.

This was all part of the chocolate float, which covered everything near it in chocolate. Definitely the best smelling float!

I love it when the police are willing to get in on the fun.

The theme behind this float is that the mops and brooms are all decorated by children who a taught to sweep away insults, rubbish and crime. Plus it looks amazing!

This kid was very cool.

So who’s coming on the chocolate float with me next year?

Getting Lost

I went looking for a library the other day as I needed to print some documents for work. Typical me I looked at the map, got a brief idea of the general direction I needed to go and off I went.

As I walked along I noticed some signs that were pointing towards Green Park which seemed vaguely the way I needed to go. After about 15 mins I was completely lost but check out the awesome things I saw!

Buckingham Palace! I literally walked around a corner and there it was! I will definitely have to come back when I have more time.

These guards were outside Prince Charles place. I got to see them changeover so that was pretty cool. I can’t understand how they see with that hat on! And I was under the impression they weren’t meant to move but this guy was wiggling all over the place.

Can you guess what song was in my head as I watched this guy feed pigeons at Green Park?

It’s a blurry photo, little buggers move so fast! I found my first squirrels. First one I saw I thought it was a rat. I had totally forgotten they have squirrels here. They are very cute, I could have watched them for ages.

You pay £1.50 for the privilege of sitting in these deck chairs for half an hour. I don’t know why you’d bother, the grass is lovely.

In the end it took me about three hours to get to the library because I kept getting lost and finding new things to look at. Ironically when I made it there I couldn’t photocopy unless I became a member for £400 pounds a year. But it was definitely a worthwhile day.

Do you deliver?

When googling the other day with Mum we came across prank phone calls by Little Becky on YouTube. I had heard some of these on the radio and they are pretty good. If you haven’t heard them before the best one by far is School Demolition. Little Becky is an eight year old girl from Dublin, we were trying to decide whether or not someone is writing the lines for her but some of the things she says are so quick it is hard to tell. We then went on to listen to some other prank calls, the best one we found Pizza Prank Call, literally had us crying with laughter.