Sweets galore!

Autumn to me has always been my favourite season. It not only is full of warm cosy sweaters, open fires, beautiful colours, apples and bonfires, it’s also the time of year that I start to embrace my sweet tooth again after salads and fruit through summer.

What more perfect time can you include in this other than All Hallows Eve and of course the much loved Bonfire Night. We don’t allow the children to roam the neighbourhood trick or treating. Instead we gather at friends and they have a small party where they play the more traditional games such as bobbing apples.

Among the games we play we use a broom to get our pumpkins (later to be carved) from one end of the room to the other,  glow in the dark tic tac toe (use glow bracelets) and of course using lots of toilet roll to create the best mummy wrap from your friend. Of course each game is celebrated with sweets and a large bowl is set aside by the front door for all the other little visitors who pop past. Of course some sweet shops have some amazing Halloween sweets around – Candied worms, strawberry lace veins – I know charming hey? – and good old fashioned marshmallow ghosts, check out these from Appleton Sweets.

Of course you might find you need to pace yourself as less than a week later comes out big event! Bonfire night! Butter popcorns balls and toffees make the perfect accompaniment to the ooh and ahhs experienced across the country on November the 5^th. I still love sucking on toffees as autumn gets colder and the dog walks become crisper and the smaller streams by the river start to freeze over.  Thankfully these carry me into December with enough recovering time after gorging on sweets at the start of November to fill my tree and advent calendars with chocolates and candy canes!

See! Perfect toffee sucking weather!

So you see all the hard work I put in over summer and the cut down of sweets is more than made up for over the next couple of weeks. But quite frankly I think a little of what you love is not going to harm you and will probably stop the boys gorging later on in life. We in fact still have a couple of Easter eggs left over from April! Amazing hey? If they hadn’t got them lined up on the bookcase they could have disappeared in my tummy by now! So what are your favourite sweets at this time of year? Are you for hard candies? Chewing gums or like me do you indulge in the toffees?