On Sunday I decided to head out bright and early with some friends to check out Oakland’s Dia de los Muertos celebration in Fruitvale. It was a little difficult to shake off the previous night’s Halloween festivities but after polishing off a yummy pupusa, I was good to go. Although the Oakland celebration was scaled down a bit from previous years due to the nasty “R” word we don’t speak of here at LAMA HQ, spirits were high, food was fantastic and we had a great time. Check out some of the gorgeous sites from Sundays festivities!

Over the weekend I got together with my neighbors to make some Sugar Skulls to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. Sugar skulls are traditionally made to commemorate deceased family members during the Dia de los Muertos celebration. Check out this site for some more sugar skull history. It was a process that took us two days to complete but it was tons of fun. Here’s what happened on the first night:

1. With our instructions in hand, we were ready to go. Click here for instructions.

2. The first step was to create the sugar skull mixture in a large bowl.

3. Next we had to fill the skull molds with the sugar mix.

4. Pressing the sugar mix firmly into the molds was essential.

5. The molds came in two parts, the skull tops and the skull bottoms.

6. After all of our skull tops and bottoms were done. We laid them out on large pieces of cardboard to start the 12 hour drying process.

Day 2

7. We took the dry sugar skulls out to the backyard for the “glueing” process.

8. That’s me glueing the sugar sugar skull tops and bottoms together with the sticky frosting we prepared.

9. Once the skulls were dry and ready for the best part (decorating!), we placed the color frosting we had made earlier in the day into ziplock bags. We cut tiny holes on the bag corners and used them as frosting dispensers.

10. That’s us concentrating VERY hard on decorating our skulls. It’s was a bit more difficult than we anticipated and I think we were in silent competition with one another to make the best skulls.

11. Here they are! The final product of all our labor. The sugar skulls are done!

12. It was quite a process but it was so much fun! We were all very proud of our sugar skulls.

13. My personal favorite. My neighbor made this one which he called, “The LAMA Skull.” Looks like LAMA blue to me!

14. This is my neighbor Ernesto eating the leftover frosting. I don’t recommend doing this. I think he seriously regretted it.

Afterward, we celebrated with several rounds of Guitar Hero. I was the band photographer for the evening. If you make it all the way through the entire two day process of making sugar skulls, I highly recommend blowing off some steam. HAPPY DIA DE LOS MUERTOS EVERYONE!!