Halloween 'Come As You Are' Brunch!

Since there were no free weekend nights in everyone's schedule this year I decided to host a come as you are Halloween Brunch for my birthday. This meant if you were still in your Jammie's, your trackies or even your Halloween costume from the night before you could feel free to turn up at ours from 12.30pm- about sixish. Everyone was pretty hungover from their night out on the Saturday so everyone was pretty much in a vegging mood!!
I made soup, quiche, salad and pasta salad as a basic and then made some great Halloween themed sweet treats! Everyone else brought different dishes and it worked really well as there was a constant replenishment of food! My sister made fantastic pancakes that were very popular! And Hillary contributed tasty M&S treats. Ed even made yummy ham and cheese croissants and was so selfless that he passed them round before taking one himself and missed out totally!! Thank you to everyone who brought a contribution to the table! Much appreciated!!

I picked out some Halloween recipes from the Good Food magazine and thought that these went very well! Spooky Spider Cakes and Spider Web Chocolate Fudge Muffins looked brilliant! The Spider cakes were more popular but I think that was because I left the fudge muffins in the oven too long!!
Their legs were made out of liquorice and I think it was only me and the South Africans that were fans- so I kept on finding little piles of liquorice legs in the corner of the room or on left over plates!! Lovely!

I used the same idea as the cupcakes to make a spider web effect on the Butternut Squash Soup- using sour cream to get that dramatic look! My two soups were Spicy Butternut Squash and Italian Glory (Chicken Noodle with white sauce and carrots) Soup was a great idea and was still being eaten at 10pm at night!!

Our clocks had gone back on the Saturday night so when Hannah turned up thinking it was 12.40- but really it was only 11.40 she was surprised to see me in my jammies and hoovering the living room!! I hadn't seen her for over 2 months so I sat down and caught up- by that point everyone else started arriving and I was still in my jammies and a hoodie- which had soup stains all over it from earlier in the day!! (classy!)

Becky and Herculine

Hillary, Becky and Zara

Vicki, Wendy, Hillary and Zara

We managed to keep the rugby off the tv until Stu arrived and it was the first thing he did!! So the girls sat and chatted whilst the boys were glued to the box!! They even went on to watch a bit of the exhibition game of American Football that was happening in Wembly later that night.

Becky and Mark

Mark and Becky- trying to make Stu smile!

Wendy and Ed (with his sore paw from rugby the day before)

Ramen ate so much he couldn't move!!

By 3 o'clock I was still in my jammies and soup splashed hoodie. I was standing in the middle of the room at one point and I just thought... well you know who your friends are when you can spend the day unwashed and in dirty clothes and they accept you for who you are!! I definitely was true to the theme of come as you are!!! ;-P

The brunch ended up merging into dinner and then board games! A group of us stayed up till 12 playing Monopoly! Much fun!

It was such a good idea and a great way to catch up with everyone. Definitely to be repeated but maybe a different theme or time of year next time! Christmas come as you are? Or maybe Easter?