The Funk Of Forty Thousand Years

I'm going to go right ahead and give myself a big ol' pat on the back for my efforts in throwing this Halloween party together.  I did it up right this year. 

Jack o' lanterns 'n all!.......though we didn't ever put them outside, because, without any trick or treaters to impress, what would have been the point?

And how cute are my tombstone cupcakes?  Those are meant to be undead gummy zombies clawing their way out of their curséd graves.  The kids were dead impressed, but wondered why none of them had legs...

Not to mention my perfectly awesome mummy dogs.  I think, by the way, that these would double at a Christmas party as infant babes wrapped in swaddling clothes.....must resist the sacrament jokes......

Bobbing for apples is sort of a classic Halloween game, right?  We opted for the cleanier, fuss free version where you hang one off the end of a broomstick.  Giggles galore.  The older girls loved it.

I hinted in my last post about the costumes that Alpha Grandma made for Boy and Missy this year.  She went all out with some tapestry remnants she's had laying around for awhile now.  They turned out fantastic,  even though my kids were totally lame in the eleventh hour, and wouldn't let me add some finishing touches to their get-ups with make-up, and up-dos, and such.  That baby pirate face is screaming for a rum-red nose and a handle-bar mustache!

The camera seemed to hate Princess Amanda all night, so I never did get a decent picture of her dress.  She insisted on the red shirt under it.  Not me.  When I suggested that the party was going to be inside, and, this being a special occasion and all, maybe she might consider going without the under clothes...she pouted and whined until I said, "What.ever."  She's all Norwegian, that one.  And no way, no how was she going to let me fix her hair all pretty like.  "Step off and let me at those skeletons," she said, "This here's what it's all about!"

I found a couple of cheapy, plastic skeletons that I could pull apart.  Then we had races to see who could put them back together the fastest.  Some were better at this than others, but they all seemed to enjoy it.

There were 10 of them altogether.  A manageable number.  The older girls thought it was hysterical to run around screaming in terror at the top of their ever-loving, squealy-ass lungs.  The boys were not even a little bit amused. 

They did end up getting to do a bit of trick-or-treating.  Earlier that afternoon, Mister went around to all of our nearest neighbors with a bag of candy, saying, "Look.  In a couple of hours a bunch of becostumed kids are going to come knocking at your door.  Just give them this, and they'll leave you alone."  One lady--the older one in the blue house--was way into it.  She ended up getting out candles, and was wearing a witch hat when she came to the door.  She refused our candy saying she had plenty and wanted to put together her own goodies.  She served it up to them out of a plastic cauldron.  That's the spirit!  I liked that lady immediately.

All in all, it was a pretty painless and (dare I say) fun four hours.  I won't even terribly much mind having to do it all over again next year.  In fact, I'm already cooking up ideas in my head to find a way to cover the ceiling with spiders and bats.  And we definitely need a  ghost hanging from the loft upstairs.....

Mister needs to work on his costum a bit though:

The stubble's alright, but the hair will never do.