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 30
th 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.
