A Quiet Halloween

I'm being boring this year and have no plans for Halloween aside from pizza and Strictly Come Dancing. I did enjoy, however, carving a Jack 'O Lantern today and using its innards to make a velvety cream of pumpkin soup (using a double cream substitute for a healthier take on it!). You can find the recipe on the BBC Good Food site here. Scooping out the contents of the pumpkin felt a little like surgery of some kind, very gruesome! I really do like the taste of pumpkin though and the other night I was lucky enough to enjoy a home-baked pumpkin pie at a small girly gathering hosted by my friend Victoria.

It was a chance to wear my Vivien of Holloway tea dress (LOVE it!), and I battled with hot bendy sticks again to attempt some vintage hair. It worked out much better this time, but as I didn't use mousse before rolling, just some heat protector spray, the curls dropped out pretty quickly over the evening and left me with a soft wave rather than curls. Still, it's more promising, and I vow to keep at it! Please excuse the manic look in the second picture - we'd had quite a few glasses of mulled wine by this point...