Happy Halloweeeeeeeen!!

One of my favorite days of the year! I get to wear orange and black striped tights to work, eat tons of candy, and see adorable children in costumes. Also I'm keeping up a tradition I started for myself when I moved into my current house 7 years ago of watching Hocus Pocus and ordering Pizza Hut. BEST NIGHT EVER!!

Today is also my little sister's 25th birthday. TWENTY-FIVE. She's old and I'm OLDER. waahhhhh. But We always have a great time together and I wish her the BEST birthday ever! (Though I guess it can't be that great if I'm not there to celebrate with her.) HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHELSEA!

Just because this video will never not crack me up. 

I hope everyone goes out and has a shockingly good time tonight! Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeen!

Lazy

I haven't posted anything of consequence in quite a while. I blame work for blocking Facebook. Now it is way harder to get the photos I want. What's that? I could just upload them when I get home? Well, that'd be true if I wasn't so busy!

Truth is I just never think about it when I get home. I'm going to try and get better about this. We'll see how that goes. In the mean time, I'm gearing up for the 7th annual Arlington Gold Halloween Extravaganza!!!! It's going to be LEGIT.

Pumpkin Patch

I'm not quite sure where November went. I feel like I blinked and it was over - though I guess technically we still have 5 days left. I just feel like it's December immediately after Thanksgiving. I did have grandiose ideas of making Christmas ornaments over Thanksgiving with my sister. However, when I opened the instructions for the ones I brought, those ideas went out the window.

I realized that if I started making these adorable Santa's, I'd have yet ANOTHER 1/2 finished project, so I decided to just keep-on-keepin'-on with my knitting. Anyways, coming off of Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I'd post about all the pumpkin themed desserts I made (for Halloween).

My friend Megan loves making iced sugar cookies. She brought over the candy corn and pumpkin cookie cutters for a baking day.

The royal icing was just thick enough that the ridges in the pumpkin stayed!

I also made a "pumpkin patch" courtesy of my Hello Cupcake! book. Unfortunately I didn't really get a good picture of the final product - but I think they turned out cute enough. The book says to use green licorice as stems, but I couldn't find any at Teeter, so improvised with tootsie rolls (which taste better anyways). Then used string gummy candy for the vines - though they didn't really twist prettily like they did in the book. The best part of these cupcakes? I used spice cake! mmmmm, I could go for one of those right now.

Also, this has nothing to do with pumpkins, but my Halloween Reddit gift-er gave me the BEST COOKIE CUTTER EVER:

AND I can use it again for non-skeletal gingerbread men this month! (Though maybe I'll have a few nightmare before Christmas ones heh)

Cottles in Wonderland

The Disney trip was AWESOME. So many things to post about. I'll start with Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party since Halloween is quickly heading further and further into the past.

The costumes we saw there were great! A lot of Disney themed ones of course - but also some random ones - one woman had a dress and matching wings that all lit up.

One of the best parts is you get to trick-or-treat around the Magic Kingdom!! They even hand out decent candy. Sure you get a lot of tootsie rolls, and some bottle caps, but ALSO - twix, snickers, and peanut butter cups!

And where else can you DANCE WITH WOODY?? All in all it was a fantastic night of dressing up. We did sign a few autographs until we were told to stop. Sorry little kids!! A few more pictures after the jump!

We Survived!!

This was probably my favorite picture of Sandy. I had great intentions of posting all this week, but as I drove home from Florida on Sunday (13 hours in the car woohoo!) and passed about 50 cherry picker trucks heading north...

I knew things weren't going to be good. Being in FL all of last week, we didn't watch the news or talk to anybody from home. So while I knew Sandy was somewhere out there, I really only paid attention to whether or not it was going to be raining at the Magic Kingdom. (it did a little, but only sprinkles - otherwise the weather was perfect all week!)

On the drive home I start getting texts from my coworkers asking if I think we'll have to go in the next day because the government, schools, and the metro are all closed. WHAT IS GOING ON?? I went to work Monday, grabbed my computer and headed right back home. EXTENDED VACATION!!!! I managed to clear out my DVR in my 2-day Hurrication AND get some knitting done :) We did have some minor damage:

But thank God it fell in literally the only direction it could have to not hit anything. I have to admit I was a little sad our power didn't go out because I had the candles and a book at the ready!

Because of the days off, Halloween ended up being crazy. I had 3 days worth of work to do in one. Then when I got home I had to throw up as many Halloween decorations as I could since we had to take them all down for the hurricane. I had about 38 trick-or-treaters and was half way through Hocus Pocus when my power went out. A belated present from Sandy!! I went to my neighbors house for a few hours then went home and read by candle light before hitting the hay. Halloween isn't over for me yet though! I am having a party on Saturday... so time to start writing up my menu and get some more decorations out!!

Moldy Chocolate

Of course I'm talking about chocolate molds! Who doesn't love chocolate covered pretzels? It's the perfect combo of sweet and salty. I personally like the witches fingers best. They are the easiest and creepiest.

These pumpkin molds are pretty adorable as well. Wilton also has a brooms, witches, pretty much anything you can think of. You can put them on pretzels, or buy lollipop sticks (but really - why wouldn't you just use pretzels?) There's also stand alone molds like this awesome coffin:

No sparkly vampire in here! For a fun way of displaying, I put the pretzels in bags and then stood them up in a cup full of Reese's Pieces. YUM.

Wednesday Review: Martha Stewart Halloween Handbook

I have both the 2010 and 2011 Martha Stewart Halloween Handbooks. You can buy them almost anywhere that sells magazines. It is a little more pricey - but TOTALLY worth it. 

What I Like:

* EVERYTHING. She has the perfect mix of costumes, decorations, food, and templates for all of the above are of course included!

* Every year she dresses as something new and they are all awesome. I was googling past issues and she has done some creepy stuff!

* Martha really knows how to commit to a theme. Want spiders? (NO! who would EVER want those!?!?) Bats? Mice? For each she has different decorations and ideas on how to transform a whole room around the one subject. 

* There is a good mix of complicated and easy. The stuff in this magazine is not kitschy - it is done by professionals, and teaches you step by step how to do the same. However, I definitely don't have time to do all of the complicated projects. Luckily there are dozens of easy and equally cute ideas.

* All of the pumpkin carving ideas are amazing. Some include painting them, stacking them snow-man-style to create families of pumpkin people, and using Christmas lights to make them look like hedgehogs.. I mean the genius just never ends!

Seriously - if you love Halloween as much as I do - then just get one of her books - you will not regret it!

Easy Halloween Cupcakes

I am a HUGE fan of the Wilton cupcake accessories. Seriously - some paper and cleverly designed toothpicks can really transform your cupcake. AND its ridiculously easy to make a simple cupcake look awesome.

While I definitely want to make some of the crazy complicated cupcakes from Hello, Cupcake!, these are just as festive and waaaay easier. I've also used the graveyard set - and there are SO MANY MORE. Then there's the Duff cupcake tattoos. I didn't think I would like them very much, but they don't taste bad and are really easy to use.

And lets not forget all the fun cupcake stands! One can never have too many. (I think I have about 5 different stands.) I could really go for a cupcake now....

Grimm Grinning Ghosts

A week from today I will be in the Happiest Place on Earth... DISNEY WORLD!!! My absolute favorite time of year to go too - Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party AND the International Food & Wine Festival. My family went 2 years ago and we all dressed up as Wizard of Oz. (Above we met up with some random other dressed up people - you can see everyone really goes all out!)

Half the fun of going for Halloween is seeing every body's costumes. This Bert & Mary Poppins was one of my favorites - even has the umbrella! We had tons of people ask to take pictures with us. In fact, for the first hour we were in the park, we had a line of little children lining up to ask for our autographs! Chelsea and I were getting creative by the end. I started drawing little broom sticks in my signature.

Mrs. Potts and Chip! 

This year we're going as Alice in Wonderland characters. And I get to be Alice!! No more green paint rubbing off on everything :D

I can't wait to see cute little kids dressed up this year. Seriously - SO CUTE.

We'll definitely get some good pictures out of our trip. What are you all dressing up as for Halloween??

Friday Musings #23

Tonight I'm going to a corn maze out in Middle Of Nowhere, VA. I haven't been to a farm/pumpkin patch/corn maze in about 5 years. (Though you see I will always act like I am 8 years old when I'm there!) I have high hopes for tonight because there is supposed to be a bon fire and it'll be DARK. We get to run through corn fields with flashlights! It'll be just like Signs, or Children of the Corn, or HP and the Goblet of Fire - any movie with a corn field and/or maze!! Maybe David Bowie will be there?

Wednesday Review: Halloween Tricks and Treats

Matthew Mead's Halloween Tricks and Treats book has some spooktacular ideas. (see what I did there?) My mom gave me this book a few years ago and I've used it a lot. Be prepared for the first Wednesday Review with pictures of things I've ACTUALLY done FROM THE BOOK!

What I Like:
* All the ideas are divided into two main sections: Treats and Tricks. (Gah I love Halloween!!) Then each is further divided into different categories. In Treats there is a chapter called "Owl-oween Party" - best ever!
* There are a lot of "easy treats" that definitely don't take skill and are fun to make/eat. I've made a festive snack mix (carmel corn, Resse's Puffs cereal, Peanut M&Ms and some other yummy stuff) and donut hole kabobs.

A lot of the ideas use store-bought cookies. You can spend all the time you save not baking from scratch to MAKE MORE THINGS! I loved these Le Petit Ecolier cookies Mead discusses in the book. Just add a pumpkin and BOOM! Festive! 

* There is an ICE CREAM section!! That's right! Ice cream sandwiches, ice cream pops, ice cream cake! mmmmm. And the best part is, like the cookies, its pretty much just decorating store-bought products - so not too difficult!
* Most of my themed/decorated foods tend to be desserts, so its nice there is a savory section included. Mead shows you how to make fun themed pizzas, a mummy meatloaf, and green soup with eyeballs in it!
* Mead makes sure you can find whatever is in his book. There is a metal wire basket tree and a few other wire products that he provides a website for.

What I Don't Like:
* The "Tricks" section is all decorating ideas - soooo not really tricksy. While a lot of these ideas are really awesome, I just don't see myself actually using many of them. Maybe they're just not my style... or not my style yet.

Over all I highly recommend this book. Almost everything is easy to make and really creative. Definitely a great starting point if you like to have Halloween parties.

EYE Love Deviled Eggs

Who doesn't love deviled eggs? You can dress them up a lot of fun ways for Halloween! I used olives and ketchup to make this batch look like eyeballs.

When my sister turned 18 she had a Harry Potter themed birthday party (her birthday is ON Halloween). So we died the yoke filling green and called them "Dragon Eggs." I don't think Hagrid would be too pleased...

My friend Mary made these Devil Deviled Eggs last year - but I can't seem to find a picture of them. This is the professional one from Martha Stewart.

So many eggcelent ways to decorate them!

Ghosts in the Graveyard - Dessert Style

The graveyard cake is one of my favorite things to make every Halloween. Not only is it really easy to put together, it's delicious and ADORABLE. The recipe is pretty straight forward, only 3 ingredients - chocolate pudding, cool whip, and Oreos. I substitute a chocolate cookie with no cream in the middle for the Oreos (basically whatever I can find at the grocery store) because I find the cream makes the crumbs harder to work with. The past few years I've also started replacing the cool whip ghosts with peeps because they stand up longer and just look better.

You can see this year the gel didn't really work in my favor to write "RIP" on the cookies. Waaa waaaaaaaaaaaa. I vary what I put in the "dirt" depending on what I'm able to find that year - gummy worms, candy corns, gummy pumpkins, etc. There's so many different things you can do - a great chance to get creative!

Friday Musings #21

I can't believe I guessed the right number last week! Way to go memory!!

Tonight I'm heading down to Williamsburg for the opening weekend of Howl-O-Scream. One of my ALL TIME FAVORITE THINGS TO DO IN THE FALL. What's that? Fall doesn't start till next weekend? Haters!! Once the weather decided to be in the 70's during the day I went into full on fall mode. Scarves and boots are coming out!! I'm going to have to go dig around in the attic and try to find my Halloween shirt. We sure do love matching in my family!

Gift Exchanges

I love presents. I love giving them and I love getting them. My whole family does - that's why at Christmas time, our tree looks like this:

No room for all the presents! 

Today I got an email from RedditGifts announcing their new gift exchanges. I've done 2 of these before - a book exchange and a board game exchange and have been really happy with both. Gifters on Reddit are really thoughtful and go above and beyond. I actually feel pretty self conscious when giving because I think my gift wont be as cool as others. But in the words of Echo - I try to be my best.

In today's email they announced 6 new exchanges which include HALLOWEEN and DOCTOR WHO!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. Guys - I LOVE these 2 things! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE them. I mean, look at the cell phone cover I just got on Saturday:

And if you don't know me already, then you'll come to know how much I love Halloween in the coming weeks as I can guarantee 99% of my posts will be about it.

Anyways - if you've never done a RedditGift Exchange - then I highly recommend it - you'll definitely get something awesome. And if Halloween and Doctor Who aren't your thing - they also have exchanges right now for Makeup & Nailpolish, Ties, Postcards, and Cubicle decorations. Time to start brainstorming on what Halloween/Dr. Who things to give others!!