I can't seem to host a gathering without baking cupcakes. So after my Halloween efforts I started up my Kitchenaid again and whipped up some Melbourne Cup themed cupcakes.

My original idea was to recreate the race using cupcakes and horsie cupcake toppers. I had grand plans of 24 cupcakes with cupcake toppers showing the colours of each horse and jockey in the race. I even wanted to make a finishing post and fence out of fondant. Of course, ultimately I didn't have time for these pipe dreams.

I ended up making 15 chocolate cupcakes. I iced these with green butter cream using my special "grass" tip. I made cupcakes toppers by meshing horse clipart and jockeys from the form guide. I only had time to do two different jockeys. I went with Red Cadeaux and Niwot cause their silks were pretty.

So not the fantabulous idea that I originally had but in the end not totally unfortunate looking. And they were taaaaaaaasty. That's all that matters really.

I didn't want to miss out on the Melbourne Cup fun this year so I hosted a little gathering at our house for my Mothers' Group. We got into the spirit of things and even hosted a sweep. You got 3 horses for the bargain price of $2. Evie and I pulled the favourite Americain out of the hat but we all know that was no help. Andrea and Zoe won the day and took home the loot (a whopping ten bucks!)

Because it was Halloween the day before Cup day, we decided to make it a Halloween celebration too. Of course the mums didn't dress up. We dressed the bubbas up! We had Jasper as a jockey, Jake as a chicken, Zoe as Tigger and Eddy as a cow. Poor bubbas. I made a tutu for Evie but I don't have a photo of it. She was a little bit cranky that day. I'm sure it wasn't tutu related crankiness.

I just know that when Evie is old enough to object she'll refuse to let me dress her up. I've got to make the most of it before she learns to talk.

Now that I'm on uni break I've got more time for fun stuff. Yay! I couldn't pass up a chance to make Halloween cupcakes. Especially as Sarah and Duncan gave me a great book, Zombie Cupcakes, to use as inspiration. After seeing Not Quite Nigella's Haunted House cupcakes, I knew that I wanted to try them out too.

I think they turned out pretty well. The cake bit is gluten-free vanilla cupcakes. The tops are yellow coloured fondant decorated with black food colouring. The decorations were a Wilson team effort. Andrew is a much better artist than me so he drew the haunted houses using a food colouring pen. I then completed the pictures (by colouring in between the lines. I'm so clever!).

One mishap. The black food colouring didn't dry properly on the cupcake toppers so everyone who ate them ended up with black lips (oops!). Not sure what I need to do to make the colouring set.

It wasn't all fun and games at our last trivia outing. There was a bit of a controversy. We'd had a cracker of an evening with three perfect rounds and a respectable showing on the other rounds. We were feeling confident. Just quietly though because we didn't want to jinx anything.

Imagine our surprise then when the placings were announced and we came in at 11^th with 72 points. Our worst showing ever! We weren't even listening when the lower placed team names were being read out because we thought we'd done pretty well. We did a quick tally of what we thought our final score should have been and there was a significant discrepancy. Cue huffing and puffing from the Badgers.

Andrew respectfully queried it with the trivia master and it turned out an error had been made with the tally. We'd actually come first! A bit disappointing because it's always fun to hear your name read out in first place and it doesn't happen to us that often.

Oh well, a scandal to inject a bit of spice into our regular trivia night.

Here is your chance at this month's questions. You know the rules:

1. What "R" did James Bond do in Her Majesty's Secret Service, Licence to Kill and Casino Royale?
   
   
2. "Australian for beer" is the slogan of which product?
   
   
3. What is the elevation of the summit of Mt Everest to the nearest kilometre?
   
   
4. Joe Cocker's version of With a little help from my friends was the theme for which TV series?
   
   
5. Who played Superman's biological father in the film Superman?
   
   
6. How many points is the word "America" worth in the traditional game of Scrabble?
   
   
7. In which country did the game of Baccarat originate?
   
   

Visitors! Yay! A few weekends ago we were lucky enough to catch up with Jane and Grant and their beautiful little boy, Leo.

I was supposed to be studying for a uni exam but Sydney put on a stunner of a day. Andrew and Evie were heading off to Coogee beach to hang out in the sunshine with the cousins. There was no way that I wanted to spend the day inside at my desk.

Evie had big smiles for Leo. It's the first time ever that Evie has smiled at another baby. She must know that they are related.