A Fairy P. and a Mary P.

Oh, Halloween was such fun! The weather was gorgeous--no parkas & moon boots messing up the costumes this year! It was so warm we didn't even need coats (a far cry from 2006 when it was about 20 degrees and snowy). We went to Trunk or Treat at our church, then came home and Maren did a little door-knocking in the neighborhood until her pumpkin bucket was too heavy for her to carry. Here's the prettiest little fairy princess on the block:
this is the look we got when we told her to "smile like a princess"
And mommy dressed up too! I knew last year that I wanted to be Mary Poppins so I've kept an eye out for costume pieces for months. The hat I bought early in the summer from this webshop. I did have to paint it black and add the daisies but I think the effect was good (although now that I see the photos I wish I'd painted the underside too, whoops). I already owned the blouse but the jacket, skirt, scarf and bag came from the thrift store. White gloves were from a costume shop (although forgotten in this photo) and I made my own parrot head umbrella. I used my vintage umbrella and found a photo of the parrot head handle on flickr. I enlarged it on the computer, printed, cut it out and taped it to the handle. Not too bad for homemade! The likeness was good enough that everyone at the church knew who I was supposed to be (even kids) and I got so many compliments! :) It was such fun and I'm already know who I want to be next year!

The Halloween decorations are all still up and I have a feeling they'll be staying that way for a while. The downside to elaborate holiday decorations is that at some point you have to figure out how to stuff them all back into the boxes in the basement, right? As much as I love Halloween, I'm definitely over it and my thoughts have turned squarely to these:Oh, my pretties. :) The thrift stores now have their Christmas items out and I have already found several great vintage goodies! Good thing, as the garage saling haul this year was meager and I was feeling a bit sad about not having more to add to my collection.

Speaking of vintage Christmas decorations, check out the gorgeous confections that the creative soul behind Magpie Ethel will be selling at craft shows this season! Don't I wish I could get my hands on some of those glittery lovelies!

Hurrah for Halloween!

Hurrah for Halloween...the best darn day of the year to be a kid, if you ask me!

Last Saturday we held our annual Halloween party. This year we had a superhero theme and asked our friends to come dressed as either a superhero or a supervillain--either an established character or one of their own design. Our friends were such good sports and so creative; I loved seeing their costumes! You can see two of them here and here. As for Quin and me, I knew what I was going to be the minute we started planning the party back in September, but we didn't come up with Quin's costume until a few days before the party. Here we are:

Quin is Michael Phelps, the closest thing we may have to a real-life superhero with the whole super-speed thing. I'm The Junker (not to be confused with The Joker). I wore a utility belt loaded down with a bag of quarters, a tape measure, my kitchen collectibles identification book, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a flashlight for looking in dark estate sale basements, and my 'cape' was a vintage apron!

We had fun decorating our house to be The Secret Lair. We constructed the ubiquitous superhero Giant Wall of Screens on one wall of the front room, had a Secret Disguise lab with funny glasses, hats and wigs, and my favorite--'autographed' photos of some of our favorite superheroes! (Click on the photos to enlarge so you can read the writing)
The party was such fun and we're already planning what to do next year!

We did a bit of pumpkin carving this year with Maren but kept it to the standard jack o' lantern face, unlike my brother Kristjan who whipped up this little piece of produce magic:

Isn't that awesome? He and my other brother made up the pattern in Adobe Illustrator. I actually suggested that my brother dress up as Prince this year--and as my bro is a 6'5" blond white guy, that has the potential to be pretty darn hilarious! Not sure where he'd find a purple velvet bullfighter suit with a 40" inseam, but maybe he'll come up with something.

And one last decoration from around my house:
When I bought this urn at the thrift a few months ago I knew I wanted to use it to display a pumpkin! I meant to put Spanish moss under the gourd and use a white pumpkin, but neither thing happened and it's too late now. Maybe next year!

Today I need to make a quick run to the thrift to hopefully find one final piece for tonight's costume (I'm dressing as something different from the Junker). Tonight we'll fairy princess-ify Maren and then head to Trunk or Treat at the church, followed by a bit of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. The weather here should be gorgeous and we're looking forward to a FUN night. I wish you all the same!!!

Halloween report

I'm a day late posting Halloween photos, but I have a good excuse--yesterday I had LASIK enhancement on my left eye. I had my original surgery back in March but my left eye was stuck at about 20/35 (right eye is 20/15) so they decided it was time to fix me. It was kind of spur of the moment--the girl at the office called on Tuesday to ask if I could come in Thursday. Luckily DH was able to get some time off work on short notice and I had it done, otherwise I would have had to wait until a few days before Christmas for their next opening. I will say that it was much, much easier the second time around. Still no treat, but much less traumatic and my recovery was even quicker than before. When I went in this morning for my follow-up, I could already see 20/20 in my left eye and it's likely that will even sharpen up to 20/15 as the swelling goes down. Hooray!

And now, on to the gratuitous cute Halloween kid photos. :) Maren made a darling little mermaid! She was so excited to put on her costume and asked all day if it was time to go Trick or Treating yet. We practiced all morning and she was a pro by the time it got dark. We had only intended to go to our neighbors' houses, but she took to it like a duck to water (or should it be a mermaid to water?) and soon we were running to catch up with her!
She had SO much fun, and we had even more fun watching her. Daddy took the video camera so we could catch all of the cuteness in action. She is just a doll anyway, but put her in a cute costume and teach her to say (in her cute little chirpy two-year-old voice), "Thank you! Happy Halloween" and I don't care who you are, if that doesn't make you melt then you have no heart. Then when we came home, she had as just much fun handing out candy to the kids who came to our door. Halloween--the best night of the year to be a kid. :)


And to end, an appropriate Friday Fiver:
1. Did you celebrate Halloween? Silly question! ;)

2. Do you like to dress in costume? Love it! I dressed up for our party but didn't dress up in costume to go ToT with Maren. I did wear a Halloween shirt that day, though.

3. Favorite chocolate? Neuhaus (fancy schmancy hard-to-find Belgian chocolate) but the past two days it's been anything I can swipe from Maren's ToT bag.

4. Best scary movie? "The Changeling"

5. Friday fill-in: ____ scares me. You want the truth? The thought of having another baby anytime soon scares me! I don't know how I'd deal with a newborn and Maren. yikes.

The Monster Mash

This weekend we held our 2nd Annual Halloween Bash. The 1st Annual party was actually in 2005 (we skipped last year) but we really do hope to make it a yearly event. The first time we held the party, we invited whole families. All of our friends have at least 2 kids, so you can probably imagine the chaos! We did a pinata and donut-on-a-string to keep them busy while the parents visited and we all ate. It was fun, but it was a ton of work, the kids were kind of wild and the house was trashed when it was all over. We vowed then and there that the next party we did would be adults only!

And so it was--a grown-up party and I have to say that I think we all appreciated being able to visit and have fun without having to keep an eye on the kiddos or worry that they were spilling punch on the carpet. I very nearly canceled the whole thing when I found out that DH would possibly not be there, as he'd be working at the World Series game that night. I contemplated doing it by myself anyway, but in the end he was able to be there and it's a good thing--no way could I have done all that on my own!

We used a Mad Scientist theme for the party, both for the invitations and the decor. DH was able to borrow some lab items from work and set up a bubbling, steaming "experiment" in the living room--something we probably couldn't have done if there had been kiddos with curious fingers in attendance. On the table you can also see a collection of bottles I filled with various strange-looking spices (from the dollar store). I had hoped to make labels for all of the jars with spooky ingredient names but I just ran out of time. Maybe next year!

For food we had various appetizers, like spinach-artichoke dip and guacamole. I made the brain cupcakes from my previous post, and they were a hit! They were really quite easy and they looked great. I used both homemade buttercream and canned frosting and I found that the canned frosting gave me better results because of the consistency. I frosted the cupcakes first before piping on the squiggles so that the cake wouldn't show through--just in case any of you want to make them someday.

I also made a favorite recipe from our 2005 party: Sweet and Spicy Spider Eggs. These were also a hit--we didn't have any left over! The recipe calls for heating the sauce in a skillet, but I just mix it together and dump it all into a slow cooker with the frozen meatballs. The recipe says it makes 48 but I had plenty of sauce for the entire bag of 80 meatballs.

We asked our guests to come in costume and almost everyone obliged. There were some really funny, clever costumes! One lady was a tornado--she dressed in black pants and a black sweater. She used black thread to sew through the sweater and left 4-5 inch lengths hanging out the front, which she tied to toy farm animals, fence pieces and tractors. When she stood up, she spun around and all of the toys flew out on the ends of the threads--it was hilarious! :) We also had a guy come as this kid. Here is a photo of DH and I all dressed up; he was Dog the Bounty Hunter and I was June Cleaver. I had really hoped to find one of those cleaver things on a headband but I looked at several stores with no luck. I would like to have been a Mad Scientist to go with our theme but I just didn't have time to look for a lab coat. I also considered dressing as Beth Chapman (Dog's buxom blonde wife) but couldn't figure out how to suitably stuff my bra. :)

One last recipe: I wanted a green punch to serve in my big cauldron and found this "Green Grog" recipe. It was really yummy and it looked great with dry ice making it bubble and steam. If you omit the bottle of rum (like we did) you'll want to have another bottle of soda on hand or you'll run out of liquid too soon.

I think all of our guests had fun, it was a manageable amount of work for us, and we hope to do it again next year!