Sweets - fudge your own fingers

You will need: 

500g sugar
1/4 pint of water
50g butter
397g tin of condensed milk (Kvickly has it)
a saucepan
a square or rectangular tin

Dissolve the sugar in the water on a low heat.
This took ages and we gave up waiting.
I googled 'Why doesn't sugar dissolve' and got a
technical answer I didn't understand.
But it didn't seem to matter.

Pour in the condensed milk.

Add the butter. Jake almost put a great
big lump of butter in the saucepan but I caught him
just in time. You just need 50 grams.

Next step: Help mum cut up some meat for dinner
while she stirs the fudge. Cut your own meat by mistake.
Wrap your hand up like a mummy and sprinkle on some
 red food colouring to get your real mummy extra worried.

Wave it about looking for sympathy and hover near the biscuit tin.

Back to the fudge...when it gets thick enough to make a
ball when you drop a bit in cold water...

...it's ready to be beaten until thick and creamy.

Grease a tin ready so the fudge comes out easier when cold.

And pour in the fudge.

Smooth out into the corners.

And use a pizza cutter cos it's more fun and not
as likely to amputate anything vital.

You have to push quite hard.

Then remove the squares of fudge.

You can serve them on a plate or put them in
pretty frilly cases if you prefer.

You can also dribble red food colouring on them for Halloween, perhaps!

ENJOY!

Then take the dog for a walk to burn off some calories :o).

Sweet creepy crawlies...and much more besides at the National History Museum of Denmark

 Natural History Museum of Denmark, Universitetsparken 15, Cph Ø; open Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00; tickets: over-16s: 75kr, under-16s: 40kr, under-3s free adm; 3532 1001, snm@snm.ku.dk;www.zoologi.snm.ku.dk/english

These terrific photos and more were taken by Thomass Hahan. Smile please!

Incredibly scary or just cute and hairy?

Bra-vo? Is that a bikini she's wearing there? 

And these sculptures were amazing too.

Can't be easy having such long legs. But she seems happy enough.  

Not all spiders are black.

This one looked a little like a Scorpion.

And this leather sculpture was bigger than Jake and Louis.
Not sure they were meant to be sitting on it.

A web site with a difference?

Plenty to learn - even for Jake, who has more than 100 tarantulas - at his dad's :o).

Then when you've seen the spider
exhibition, you can explore the
rest of the museum.

More than enough skeletons to last past halloween.

If you've got the backbone for it.

Cases of skulls...

...that you are welcome to pick up. If you can carry them.

Some are too heavy.

Like this whale.

Or this giant sloth. I like sloths :o). See he's only got three toes.

You can sit for ages enjoying the view.

And marvelling at the smily beasties.

And when you've seen enough, it's bye bye Lucy and off you trot.
Lucy  is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago and her skeleton was discovered in 1974.

Making a pumpkin lantern...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! 

To make your pumpkin lantern...

You will need: 

• an adult
• somewhere that doesn't matter if it gets sticky (an old table outside?)/a newspaper
• a sharp knife
• a pumpkin
• a spoon 
• a tea light

Get your friendly adult to slice the lid off the pumpkin and then
you can use the spoon to scrape away the seeds.
If you dry the seeds you can use them for a necklace.

Scrape the seeds out of the pumpkin too.

Draw a picture of the face you want on the front.

Draw the face on the pumpkin and get your pet adult to cut it out -
unless you're old enough to do it yourself with an adult beside you.

It can be fiddly.

Make sure you slice the pumpkin flesh away right through
or the candle light won't show up. 

Finally, Jake cut little triangles out around the lid on the little pumpkin.
We've heard that if you rub salt on the  inside they last longer.
But not if they're left out in the rain.

Ooohhhhhhhh! Happy Halloween!!!!

We've heard Americans are much better at this than we are and have lots of special tools and templates they can buy in stores. Well done you guys! But we had fun anyway.

Conjure up your own Frankenstein...

Our dog Dr Watson is all ready for Halloween, though there's still
almost a week to go until 31st Oct. He's a real party animal.

How to make a monster:

Feed your child a lot of chocolate, fizzy drinks and let them stay up way too late. Just joking. 

The kind of monster we once made went down a treat with kids of about 8 or 9. 

Step 1: While the kids are on a treasure hunt finding red toffee apple vampire hearts and driving kebab sticks trhough them, find a room and put four tables in a square leaving a gap in the middle big enough for a person.

Step 2: Cover the tables with table cloths (crushed velour in red/orange or black from Jysk Sengetøj) that reach the ground but leave a gap in the middle over the hole.

Step 3: Cover the hole with another smaller table cloth.

Step 4: Fill a sack with body parts - a cauliflower for a brain, heart, wig, gloves that look like a hands, shoes, old pair of mens underpants, bra? etc. etc.

Step 5: Hide a daddy under the table wearing some of the same stuff

Step 6: Turn down the lights and invite in the kids in to sit on chairs around the outside of the tables. Parents round the walls 

Step 7: Explain you're going to make a monster because Halloween isn't cool without a monster

Step 8. Take the sack of body parts slowly round the table getting kids to fish stuff out one by one and carefully peeling back just the relevant corner of the top tablecloth (brain at top end, feet at bottom) and tuck the body parts underneath the cloth out of sight. You'll still see a lumps.

Step 9:  When done, get the kids to hold hands and chant Aberacadabera. Then louder. Then really loud.

Step 10: Up through the hole in the tables, draped in the top tablecloth rises your very own monster and as the tablecloth slips off you see he's wearing a bra, underpants and all kinds of other body parts/makeup - this time not a mummy but a willing Daddy - preferably the tallest of the lot.

I accept no liability for telling you this trick. But it really worked. The parents were as goggle-eyed as the kids :o) 

Photo by Thomass Hanhan
Here's a dear smiley spider from the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen. We'll be showing you more of his friends in a week or two - that exhibition is on until December. And we'll be showing you the mummies on show at Glyptoteket all year round.

But first....there's only two days left of the Halloween exhibition in Tivoli so check out the other post quick!