witch – Simi's trinkets and treats

This year I decided to change it up a little for valentines day so each week I’ll be featuring a different theme. Last week we had a Vampire theme but this week we’ll have a witch theme. This idea has a lot of wonderful features, from love potions, herb infused meals and massage oils to enchant your lover this Valentines day.

Today I have made a ‘Love Potion’ and a ‘Lust’ potion. I was watching Shrek 3 the other day and noticed that the fairy god mother added some lust, passion and desire to her little love potion so I decided to do the same and what better way to throw all caution to the wind than to include some alcohol :p

To start off you need some cute bottles that looks like it can hold potions. Then you’ll need some old paper to label your potion. I got my little bottles from our local Daiso store ( its like a $5 store). To make your paper look old, you can soak it in some tea and bake it in the oven for 5-10 minutes. It works better if you tear the paper before baking it rather than after.

First pour some hot water in a container and leave a teabag in there for a few minutes

Then write your message on a piece of paper and place it in the container. Use the teabag to soak and colour the paper. Make sure you wet the whole piece of paper then remove and place in a baking pan or dish in the oven for 5 minutes. If you feel that you need a more burned look you can leave it in for another 5-8 minutes.

I glued the paper to the bottles with syrup. That way I could easily remove it after use and reuse the bottles for something else later on.

I made two different cocktails mainly because the first one had grapefruit in it and my husband doesn’t care much for grapefruit. The second one I made with berry juice instead that’s also evident in the colours of the two ‘potions’. I also used LOTS of Vodka…maybe too much, so if you don’t mind a very strong vodka flavour in your drinks you can rather use 1 shot vodka per cup of juice. To be honest the drink is very potent so if you’re not used to drinking rather go for the softer version, because I only had a small sip here and there to taste the drinks and at one stage I was swinging around the living room… not really ideal when you’re preparing stuff for the blog.

Love potion

Ingredients

8 Tablespoons grapefruit juice
2 tablespoons apple or white grape juice
4 tablespoons strawberry Vodka

Combine in a blender and mix. Pour into cute little bottles for display

Lust Potion

6tablespooons Grapefruit juice
2 tablespoons Berry juice
4 tablespoons strawberry vodka

Combine in a blender and mix. Pour into cute little bottles for display

As mentioned above you can do a milder version of either one of the drinks by using 1 cup of juice for every shot of Vodka. You could also try my White wine sangria recipe.

As an English teacher in Korea, one of our key responsibilities is Halloween. Coming from South Africa we don’t really celebrate Halloween except for the odd dress up party at the malls or theme park.

Last year was our first year in charge of Halloween. This year we’re having a Ghost house that span’s over 2 classrooms. My husband opted to be the witch as that confuses the children. If they know that it’s only their teacher in a costume then they aren’t as scared. When they are scared they usually say your name, if you respond then they know its you but if you stay mute then you freak them out a bit more.

For my husband’s Witch room we had to make some props which included a witch house, a scary tree and some books and bottles. We’re not finished with everything yet but here is what we’ve done so far.

This was the initial tree, my husband built a cute little house out of boxes and stick on bricks. We built the tree out of a refrigerator box and some paper mache arms. I later decided that we had to make the tree look a little scarier

And this was the result.

For his entrance I also tried to make a tree looking door, which didn’t come out as I had hoped , but it looks OK for the purpose. It’s not done yet… but I used newspaper, liquid glue and some polystyrene balls cut in half to make the eyes.

For props I remembered ‘THE BOOK’ from Hocus Pocus

I made this from a box using a small rectangular box, tissues, tissue paper, liquid glue and some salt-dough clay and cream ribbed paper for the pages. I used this tutorial

…..and this one too