Happy Halloween 2009

This is amazing! I am posting a blog the day after it happened.
Before we left for our trips, Marenda suggested that we host a Family Halloween party on Friday, October 30th then parents could just let their children do a little Trick or Treating Saturday evening.
Well, once you get me going on something, it seems there is no stopping me. My husband, Garth, referred to me several times as the "Energerizer Bunny". I had some fun party books and ideas and there were many I wanted to try so, although our girls suggested they could help with dinner, I told them I wanted to do it alone so that I could do a real Halloween buffet. Here is what came out of it. And like the kids, we will start with dessert first.



Eat-em-up Ghosts were formed from Rice Krispies and marshmallows - though I will be the first to admit that trying to make that sticky stuff stick together and do what you want it to is quite a challenge. When I had finally achieved somewhat of a ghost shape, I then dipped them in white chocolate and put eyes and mouth of melted chocolate.



These are delightful tasting cookies but don't they look gross?































Creepy Crawly is blue finger jello with gummy worms in it.












The eerie Eyeballs are made from lemon jello, cream cheese & pineapple juice. I had an egg holder that I was able to pour them into then Marenda helped me paint the iris' on with food coloring. They look terrible but are actually pretty tasty.







Cat Dip had sour cream with taco seasoning on the bottom and then had lettuce, tomatoes and cheese on top and I used bell peppers, olives, tomato and licorice to complete the picture

















These are just our normal Deviled Eggs. I found that my small cookie scoop was great for filling the centers of the eggs.










Our Witches' Calderon held a cheese/salsa dip

















Since we had several small children who were "grossed out" by the weird names on the food, Marenda came up with this one. In the bowl it doesn't look any different but you pick up a hot dog piece and it has spaghetti strings going through it. You can see this if you look closely.














These meatballs with a little sour cream and an olive gave a spooky impression and caused some to hesitate trying them.










This is nothing original, just the traditional Mac & cheese only it was Halloween shapes. Again, I served this mainly for the picky children.
















This "Dinner in a Pumpkin" didn't turn out as it should have. The instructions didn't allow nearly enough cooking time. The pumpkin should have been soft enough to eat and it wasn't and the rice/ground beef dish inside was barely warm, but it looked impressive.
















Everyone loves Little Smokies. I originally planned to wrap these in biscuit mixture and bake them but decided it was too much work for the time I had left. They were definitely a hit, though.






Garth and I worked hard to create an atmosphere for fun and craziness. We took all of the wall decorations out of the dining area then we hung crepe paper streamers on two walls, put up what decorations we had, including a huge spider, some hanging ghosts I made from cheese cloth and starch and some bats. I bough 3 yards of cloth at WalMart for $1.50 a yard for the table cloth and added cobwebs, which became annoying during the night as they kept grabbing onto us.
I was rather pleased with the table spread. I printed out the name cards to add to the festiveness.














Here are two tired parents ready to receive our guests.











Liz & Deren brought their traditional dry ice root beer and it put the final touch on the evening and tasted wonderful.



















With food enjoyed, we had the children line up for pictures in their costumes.



Sheridan is an impressive Greek warrior. He made his helmet from paper mache, Drake was a Time Traveler and he wore a helmet with all kinds of time pieces and a calculator on it - also created by himself. Marcus was the Mad Scientist, Caleb a cute skeleton, Addie a beautiful mermaid, Kasen a cute baby lion and Mitchell a handsome frog




















After the party, the children gathered in the little room under the stairs and told scary stories - or so I am told.



























Trina informed us that she didn't dress up but "baby" did so we had to have a picture of grandparents and baby - and got the bonus of having our lovely daughter in the picture, too.


And that was the end of our party. We had lots of fun and will have a lot of pleasant memories for years to come. Happy Halloween everyone.

A Couch, a Birthday, a Space Room and Much More

I just couldn't resist taking these pictures when we stopped at Marble Canyon. It is an amazing scene and takes my breath away every time I see it.














We spent the week of October 12 to 18, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona with Kendra, Barry and their 3 children - Kira, Trenton and Tessa. We were warned before getting there that Miss Tessa who turned 2 while we were there, was "into everything" and she proved that statement correct. Though I don't have much of it documented, these pictures show just a little of her capers. She loved getting my pins and sticking them into something whenever she could get away with it. Probably the worst time was when she found a paint brush with wet paint still on it and she started to redecorate herself and Trenton's newly painted room.
















Shortly after we arrived, Kira brought me 2 pair of jeans with holes in the knees and wanted to know if I could fix them. One pair also needed letting down so this is what we ended up doing.

Kira also had me help her with her first real sewing lesson and she made a cape for a decortive doll I had taken down to her that had belonged to her great grandmother Nielson.


I made a couple of things for Halloween costumes - cow print vest for Barry and chaps for Kira (no picture available). I had to include this amazing picture of the lengths people will go to for Halloween costumes. This is Barry's sister, Mikelle and her husband, Bobby. He had asked me for some help in putting the shoulder wings and the black stripes on his costume that he had specially made. I also put the red band on the briefs. Both of these are pretty amazing costumes


Trenton decided he had to try out the mask and the claws.















Now for what I really went down to do - the couch. When we were there 6 months ago, Kendra got the cloth for this couch but we ran out of time to get it re-upholstered. We spent 2 days pulling staples in order to get all of the fabric off.



Kira was actually a lot of help to me. She was out of school that week and I would loosen the staples and she would come behing me and pull them out.



I set my sewing area up in the living room. If you look closely you can see the various pieces of the couch and the uncovered cushions.




At last the great day when the couch was back together! Kira is my model to show it off.














Our last day in Phoenix was spent celebrating Tessa's 2nd Birthday.



With Kendra not feeling well, it wasn't hard to convince her to keep the celebration low key.
I helped her with the cake. It is interesting to note that she, like Mitchell, would light up when we talked about her cake. All she cared was that it was pink and had candles.























We had a lovely ham dinner with the Haltermans




Then Tessa opened her gifts. After she got her folding chair and opened this Elmo/Cookie Monster phone, she didn't want much of anything else.




















While I worked on the couch and other sewing projects, Garth and Kendra were working to transform Trenton's room into a Space room.



They painted it a grey/blue (twice because they ran out of paint and went to get more and the man at Home Depot made a mistake and gave them the wrong kind of paint)


















They even got Kira's help on the painting.





Kendra bought these blue comforters for $10 each and wanted to have them look like the solar system. I told her I would do it if she would cut everything out for me - that was no small task to find the right cloth, put Wonder Under on the back and then cut it all out.
Once this was done, I sewed the orbits on each quilt then ironed on the cutouts and machine embordiered them on.




For finishing touches on the room, silver moldings were put around the room and around the side and ceiling "fake" windows.