Sugar Skulls

So, are all of you familiar with the Mexican tradition of celebrating the Day of the Dead on November 1st?  Well,  we first became aware of the celebration because the Hispanic ministries at our parish hold a wonderful celebration and decoration the narthex every year.  Anyway, we are also big fans of the Indianapolis Arts Center (IAC) - all of us have taken classes here over the last several years including ceramics, pottery, photography, glass blowing...  So, the long and short of it is that IAC does this amazing Day of the Dead celebration that last most of the month of October and the first part of November every year!  The inside is decorated with all of these amazing alters and the grounds have shrines - all of which are made by artists and are absolutely amazing (once they're up, I'll post some pictures!)  Below is a modest (and small) example of some of the alters that are on display.

So, yesterday the girls and I went to IAC for the sugar skull making workshop.  We (and by we I mean me) messed up - thinking it was an open house workshop rather that a 3 hour workshop, we showed up late and missed the part of the workshop where you actually make the skulls, but we were still able to each decorate a skull, so here is the final product(s)...

 mine

 Big S and her sugar skull

 Little G and her sugar skull

 Little S and her sugar skull

It was a lot of fun.  They gave us some sugar skulls, brightly colored frosting and a baggie full of glitter, feather and other fun things to decorate our skulls.  It was a creative free-for-all and we had a blast!  We were the last ones to leave - we were having so much fun!  They gave us the receipe (but of course you have to have the molds to make the skulls in) so may be we'll be able to make them on our own one day.  Next year we'll know to get there for the start of the workshop so that we can make the skulls in addition to decorating them!!