Yeah, Halloween is only a couple of days away and I am in full planning mode. My friend Mark is having a killer Halloween party at his house on Friday. It’s probably going to be a smaller party but I still wanted to make something rad as a party favor. Heidi from My Paper Crane posted an excellent blog entry on some party favors that she made for her Halloween party this year. I LOVED the idea and decided to make some candy poison bottles for Mark’s party. I first downloaded some the poison bottle labels that Heidi suggested and then photoshopped fun names into them (ie. “Holt’s ‘Kill All’ Solution”, “Panda’s Pharmacy”, and “Hanford Lemoore, Pharmacist”). I then Mod Podged the labels onto different bottles that I found at Costplus (they were on sale, woo hoo). Finally, I filled the bottles with vegan candy (pictured are bottles filled with regular and Halloween themed Dots).

Also, if you want a current list of vegan Halloween candy then check out this VegNews article (this is the most up to date). Several of Peta’s Halloween candy lists are out of date and list some candy as being vegan when they are not. As a warning, anything candy that lists “Confectioner’s Glaze” should be investigated.

Yesterday Hanford and I went over to my parent’s house for a 4th of July BBQ. My parents also invited over my Aunt and some family friends. On the menu was veggie burgers, corn on the cob, bean salad, and two different types of potatoes (vegan potato salad and roasted rosemary). We also had watermelon for dessert. Most of the BBQ was spent in the backyard playing games (Blockhead and Apples to Apples). All in all it was a really fun BBQ and I am thankful to get to spend time with family and friends.

For Mother’s Day this year I wanted to do something different for my mom. I knew that both my brother and father were going to get her flowers (they do this every year); so I wanted to do something alittle out of the ordinary. Since my mom is a huge fan of bacon I knew that I wanted to do something with that (but vegan, of course). Most of my bacon loving friends are totally into Voodoo Doughnut’s bacon maple bars. I thought I would try to make something like that for my mom this year but in a vegan version. My mom isn’t vegan but she does love vegan baked goods; so I thought I would give it a shot. I made a basic cake donut and some maple frosting to glaze the top. I then fried up some fake bacon and then put it on top of the donuts. The cake donut turned out really moist but I think that I need to tweak the maple frosting recipe a bit (it didn’t have enough maple flavor). Most importantly, my mom loved the donuts. I’m going to tweak the recipe around until I’m super happy with it and then do a blog post on it; so be on the lookout for an upcoming recipe!

I also made about 72 mini cupcakes (vanilla on vanilla and vanilla on mocha) for Mother’s Day since SVRG also had roller derby practice that night. There are a ton of moms in the league and I knew they were sacrificing their Mother’s Day evening to make it to practice; so I wanted to do something nice for them. We also had some Rat City skaters joining us as guests; so it was nice to have something for them too.