halloween 2013

did you notice that the title rhymes without even trying??

anyway, after requesting my family share their halloween dinners, etc from this year, it's about time that i get things together and share about ours.  i guess sometimes it just seems so hard to upload pictures?  maybe that's why the current pictures on the camera go back to girls' camp in july.... oops?  time to upload/save on the computer so we can move on to the next set of fun!

i guess we didn't take pictures of all our decorations like in some years past, but i didn't feel like anything was that earth shattering.  i did, however, take a picture of my new favorite decorations.  i got a fall vinyl table cloth that is too big, but we decided to keep it.  then, weeks, after originally seeing them in a different target, i found the napkin holders that i should have bought the first time around!  it was early september, though, and i was making myself "just look" and go back later.  i decided i didn't want things to sell out, so i went back to our own target where they didn't even have them... wah.  but when they showed up weeks later, i made it happen, and it looks so good on the table cloth : )  i didn't do the skeleton fabric on the table this year, i just couldn't figure out where to put it....  i found the spiderweb bandanna at hobby lobby a few years ago.

three saturdays before halloween we went to a friend's halloween party.  i didn't even think about taking our own camera, but she took some pictures and shared them on facebook.  we wore our costumes from last year - thank goodness they still fit! : )

two saturdays before halloween we went to a carpool party where there wasn't anything halloweeny, i don't think... just food, kids, and watching the new star trek movie since parts of it were filmed in the NIF at the lab that will and another of the guys does work for.  and no one took any pictures... i don't think : )  the kids who wanted to watched brave.  we still haven't seen brave, but it was much more fun, i'm sure, to hear the guys call out things like "there it is!", "can you believe they let them ____!", etc as we could see parts of the facility in the movie.  even i've seen the facility in real life at last year's lab family days!  so that was cool to recognize some things.

one saturday before halloween was the ward halloween party.  they had soups, chilis, desserts, rolls, cornbread(!), potatoes, carnival games "for the kids", and a trunk or treat complete with a trunk contest.  we had a good time eating, talking with people, and handing out candy.  those kids go around and around until you pretend you're out of candy!  well, most of the ones going around without parents.  i didn't think it was necessary to keep handing out all 285 lolipops... call us the scrooges of halloween!  we handed out several seconds, thirds, etc, then let our cauldron run low.  i mean, what if we actually got a trick or treater??? we'd need something!  and now we have lolipops for school and cub scouts!  (we weren't even close to stingy, really.)  notice our efforts on decorating the trunk!

i guess it was the friday before halloween we made jack-o-lantern cheeseburgers!  team effort - will is the man of the grill, but he likes me to do just about anything that involves the cutting board.  not bad for a first time effort, especially considering i carved with a regular big knife.  we'll try again next year!

i put way too much time, energy, and grief into a costume idea.  while many teachers were going to be minions from despicable me, i just didn't feel like it.  i also didn't have good ideas to execute it.  well, that didn't involve buying something that i'd likely never wear again, like overalls?  come halloween i saw several different good ideas that i could have done, but oh well.  instead i bought a cheap tshirt at michaels and pieces of felt.  i cut strips and fringed them, then used a hot glue gun to glue them to the shirt.  i was a pinata!  i also glued them to two cones and those to a headband - i was lucky i could salvage my cheap melting headband from winco.  i guess the hot glue pushed it to its limit!  it was a well insulated costume for the morning, and i was impressed with myself that i wore the headband all day!  well, until after school at least.  it was "easy" in the sense that i knew exactly what to buy, exactly what steps to take, and i understood it.  i wasn't trying to piece something else together which sounded so much harder to me.  i guess we never took a picture of me in it, but i do have a hard copy print that a parent gave me.  (if i still know where it is?)  don't worry, it's now in the fall/halloween box for years to come!  eventually we'll have a costume box, but for now all the decorations, costumes, etc fit into one big plastic tub.  we probably should aim to keep it that way as long as possible!

if you're having trouble sleeping, let me suggest halloween with first graders!  i will admit that that day took it out of me!  i was so drained by the end of the day!  after the morning parade, getting through the day, and party with parents/grandparents/siblings in the afternoon, by pick-up after school it took all i had to stand there and wait for all of the rest of them to get picked up.  all i wanted was to curl up in a little ball under the desk.  when i got back to the room i didn't even know where to start and didn't want to!  i honestly cannot remember halloween at amelia three years ago.  when i saw some old pictures i could remember the morning parade, but i really can't remember anything else about the day.  have i pushed it from my memory?  or was this year somehow that much harder?? : )  it was nice to hear this last week that a parent who was there, and is in the classroom fairly frequently thought that halloween went well.  what a relief!  it felt like crazytown to me!  anyway, by the time we got home that evening, i knew that i just couldn't make the halloween dinner.  while i talked nonstop for a while about my day will made a frozen pizza.  we watched the charlie brown great pumpkin special and vegged while not minding that we didn't have to get up and answer the door for a single trick or treater.  no more lolipops down for the count!  believe it or not, the kids seemed great the day before and the day after halloween.  so... file that away for later! : )

two days later, november 2 we had a marathon day organizing and going through boxes.  we finally have all the stuff in the file cabinet, got rid of lots of stuff, and have a room that looks like we could get it ready for a child!  all of this was to make us feel better about how things looked/were organized before our home visit... if that ever happensssssssss!  that evening i made our halloween dinner!!!  i didn't want to not do it, but at that point i was done with halloween.  i'm glad we did!  i learned how to make a pot pie (yay!!) and now we have some good sized ramekins for all sorts of yummy things later.  when i went shopping for things for the dinner i was planning to just get the small disposable tins winco has.  but they were out!!!  clean out!!!!  i was so disappointed!  i didn't want to make one big one, i wanted personal ones!  a friend offered ramekins, but i decided it was just a good excuse to get some.  i got lucky at raley's when i did find a second one behind some smaller ramekins, even though it was dusty!  anyway, now the unveiling you've all been waiting for! : )

it was fun!  it was so much food!  i only ate half my pot pie.  the clot was a maraschino cherry.  and yes, apparently we were matching... : )


i didn't buy the cherries special.  i just happened to see the jar back there as i was getting other things out, and it wasn't a problem because i had to rush and type up/alter last year's menu moments before we ate.  i thought will had seen me put a cherry in each glass before filling them.  so it was fun when he asked if there really were clots in there... hehe : )  several of the things i already had names for, but there were some i just had to think of on the spot...  i had known "yummy mummy" for a days, though : )  and now that i have the jack-o-lantern  face cutters, next year's jack-o-lantern cheeseburgers will be easier!  it will also be much easier cutting through cheese with them... it gave me a red mark/bruise on the base of my palm that's finally almost all gone now to cut through the sweet potatoes/yams(???) with them.

we were full and it was getting late, so we saved dessert for the next day.  we made the spiders in the graveyard, and even though will consented to let his spider have legs for the picture, he let me eat them as he doesn't like pretzels...  we still need to make the pumpkin smoothie!!  maybe i was less excited because while i do want to try the recipe, it clearly has the lamest name on the whole menu.... i was trying to hurry at the time, but i wish i had included some half-clever something with it... oh well.  it's still pumpkin season.

and there you have it.  the bulk of how we celebrated halloween all the way through november 3! : )  AND pictures for the first time in months!