I suppose it would be utterly lame to sign up for the
and not post something on the very first day. We’re babysitting my niece, who is a lovely girl of seven. Emily is excited at her “very second sleepover.” We all stayed home to recover from our now becoming annual Halloween bash. No hangovers thankyouverymuch, but I cooked and cleaned for two days straight and by 10 pm last night I was ready to fall over . Our niece came by after school today and we have had a wonderful evening of arcane 2nd grade math (what is this the new new NEW math?) pizza and wierd ducky games in the bathtub.
The party was perfect. Perfect people, wonderful kids, the food mostly worked out and everyone left in time for us to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Indeed, they all left before 10. Each year I’ll learn more about how to make it as close to perfectly wonderful as possible. This year I think the food was great, except I tried to use cups and spoons instead of bowls for the soups I made (a pumpkin/yam/leek and a lentil/portobello/tomato) which most people didn’t parse. I also think the cupcakes though passibly decorated with skeletons were just a bit too much of the sugar (though they were made from scratch not box) on that most sugary evening. The severed lady fingers were a hit though and the pumpkin cheesecake I made was quite tasty if I do say so myself. I made a frozen ice heart and hand and floated them in the kids punch (frozen oj/cranberry juice and apple cider) and put chips in a coffin. My friend L made this incredibly cute veg mummy pie that looked hilarious and decorated sugar cookies with the kids. The kids were freaking adorable. Several Cinderellas, some pirates, a spongebob, Darth Vader, Jasmine and more. Most of the adults dressed up too! Even James got fully into this year and I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful anniversary. That makes six and I still love the guy.
I wish I’d had made up spooky name placards for everything, but I ran out of time. I absolutely have to take a picture of our mock graveyard, hanging decayed guy, 15 foot rope spiderweb and flickering candle lanterns. We got many comments from guests and neighbors alike. The kids loved walking through the wee little boneyard (there was a coffin too) and trying to scare themselves.
I just love all the people that came and I keep thinking how this exact evening is what I’ve been dreaming of since I found out I was pregnant. The kids ate too much candy and played scream and run throughout the house. Everyone kept an eye on everyone else’s kid, we watched the Corpse Bride and James and the guys talked about various arcaneoddities in the back yard. The span of ages was 2 to 42 and the span of people even greater. I wasn’t even nervous, just very very happy. We had loads of trick or treaters and met some folks in the neighborhood who said our house was easily the best decorated.
I’m all over the map with this entry, but I wanted to make sure I made the first day of nanablopomo no matter how tired I was and did have a bit to explosively enthuse about.
And now here is Princess Jasmine (I pushed for MuLan, but Jasmine is at least NOT Snow White)
And here are the rough pictures of the party.
