Cake before Candy

Gramz' famous Lemon Cake

 October is the month that Arwen and my husband have their birthdays two days apart.  Halloween comes just two weeks later.  This year, as I mentioned in a previous post, we were so lucky to have Gramz fly up to visit for Birthday Week.  Unfortunately, our gorgeous fall sunshine and glowing leaves were put on hold for the single week she was here...and it rained every day. Gramz was actually hailed on while watching Arwen's soccer game.  So much for showing her that the midwest had its beauty.  We pretty much confirmed her preference for the Southwest sun.  Alas, here are some pictures of the several cakes that were baked while she was here:

Convinced that the first cake was overcooked, Gramz made a second, which I was supposed to keep an eye on...and it came out exactly the same as the first one.  Both were delicious!

 To surprise Arwen with a Lord of the Rings themed birthday, I tried my hand at copying other on-line cakes.  I found it much easier to dye coconut green rather than pipe grass frosting all over the hobbit hole.  I'm all about easy!;)

Bilbo's hobbit hole had a green door.  I knew this, I just used chocolate frosting anyway.  The windows overlook the garden, and Aragorn insisted that we add a white picket fence, for accuracy sake. Sadly, I failed to make round windows, so accuracy wasn't my strong suit.  The kids were still happy to eat it.

 And, yes, we needed a "Ring of Power" cake to go with it.  Elvish is both fun to write in and super impressive, considering that no one can read Elvish.  Except that my kids can, and they inform me that this was actually not written on the ring.  There is a different Mordor tongue of Elvish that was actually on the ring.  I'll get a shot of Aragorn's pumpkin to show you the difference....just give me some time to upload the pics. So, forget impressive, here's the ring cake:

ok, here's Aragorn's pumpkin with the ring script on it...more long and scrawly:

Aragorn decided to carve a ring, the center of which fell out, making it a circle rather than a "ring", but I still thought he did an awesome job on the Mordor-tongue  Elvish script.  (I still need to upload pictures of the costumes!) 

And so we come to the candy part.

Rosie Cotton's stash, post-Trick-or-Treat

 Arwen went as Legolas for Trick-or-Treating (is that confusing to the readers?) She was very proud of her hairstyle.  I'll get more pictures up soon...

 And, because this got accidentally uploaded (and I'm having too much fun with these names), here's my Legolas with Arwen-the-black-cat, from this summer:

Still wishing I had a little kitty around the house...boo allergies!