Hallowe'en/Samhain Celebration Ideas

It's Hallowe'en/Samhain tomorrow, so I thought I'd do a quick post on ideas for celebrating it. I used to like Hallowe'en when I was younger and when I started celebrating the sabbats in 2010, Samhain became my favourite. :)

I did a post yesterday on my other blog Star Sparkle Blog about Hallowe'en, which includes some of my fave Hallowe'en/and or horror themed books, films and TV shows (plus a couple of songs). You can check it out here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2016/10/halloween-faves-round-up.html

Michaela at Penniless Pagan has some good tips for celebrating Samhain without spending anything: http://www.pennilesspagan.com/2016/10/5-ways-to-celebrate-samhain-without.html

I also like her post on honouring loved ones who have passed away (Samhain is a good festival to do this since it's a time when the veils between the worlds are thinner and the dead are thought to come back to visit their family/people who were important to them in life): http://www.pennilesspagan.com/2016/10/honor-your-transcended-loved-ones.html

I found it was nice to think about my grandparents, what they taught me and things I used to do with them. :)

Also Althea at Modern Witch's Guide to Life has some history on Hallowe'en and ideas for celebrating:  http://modern-witch.es/enchanted-living/13-witchy-ideas-to-celebrate-halloween

And finally here's a Samhain post on Tess Whitehurst's site: https://tesswhitehurst.com/10-ways-to-celebrate-the-ancient-holiday-of-samhain-aka-halloween/



Hope you enjoy the links and have a great Hallowe'en and/or Samhain (depending on how you celebrate. :) I just did my pumpkin a bit earlier and tomorrow I'm going to make the Demon's Blood drink I usually make and have some food. I'll probably make some gingerbread skeletons or bats as well. I made gingerbread bats with chocolate on in 2013 and skeletons with icing last year, so I might combine the recipes this year and put chocolate on the skeletons, lol. I'll do a post about it soon.

Happy Hallowe'en/Samhain! :) How do you celebrate?


Photo: Tesco Holmbush's Hallowe'en display. Copyright Moonsparkle 2016.

Cornflake Choc Chip Cookies

Yesterday I made some cornflake choc chip cookies. It's a recipe from vlogger/blogger Tanya Burr's cookbook Tanya Bakes, which was featured in New magazine.You can find the recipe here: http://www.instyle.co.uk/fitness-wellbeing/tanya-burr-recipes

Update 18/4/20: Recipe links are now gone unfortunately and I don't the New mag link works anymore, I got a "Potential security risk" warning when clicking on it. :( But you can find the cornflake cookies recipe here: http://louloves01.blogspot.com/2016/07/tanya-burrs-cornflake-chocolate-chip.html

I've made crispy and cornflakes cakes (with chocolate and Rice Krispies or cornflakes) before but I've never put cornflakes in cookies, so I thought it would be good to try the recipe. I used two baking trays because I couldn't fit them all on the same one and good job I did because I burnt the first lot! lol. I kept watching the second lot but they still got a bit burnt.  :( (I'm not completely used to the new oven/cooker yet). I had enough dough left to make two smaller cookies so I had one more go. I kept watching them and kept the oven lower and this time they came out golden, lol.

They did taste quite nice in the end. I didn't have sea salt so used a pinch of table salt and I didn't have golden caster sugar either, so mixed ordinary caster sugar and light brown sugar. I also didn't have a lot of chocolate chips left (I bought them recently to use for No-bake energy balls) so I just used what I had. Not all of the cookies got chocolate chips in but they taste fine without, lol. Sometimes you feel like making something but can't afford to buy all the extra ingredients right now, so it was good that I had most of the ingredients on hand and that this recipe is adaptable.

Here is a picture of the last two cookies which came out the best:

 I'd like to bake some more cookies in the future (I don't make them that often). I might have a go at Tanya's chocolate cookies sometime.

 Hope you enjoy these ones if you make them. :)