Halloween Party

Most years we like to throw a Halloween get-together for our old college friends ~ an excuse to make themed foods & throw together a costume! There was no way we were going to attempt that last year with a newborn, but this time we were up to the task.

First I made a few new decorations. A while back we bought a set of 9 8x10 frames to fill up an empty wall that has been plaguing us since we moved here. I finally got around to hanging them & filled them with some Halloween themed papers & print-outs.



The top left & bottom right are from my old Skeleton Key fabric print with my "Happy Halloween" pumpkin stencil in the center. There are some paper snowflake style cut-out spiderwebs on the other two corners, a cut out of "Trick" & "Treat" laid over candy corn paper down the center, and on the sides is pumpkin paper where I painted on some jack-o-lantern details.

Then we have the pretty paper lanterns, inspired by some of Martha's. For the frame I cut a piece of black posterboard in half (long-ways), made a template & traced that side-by-side four times (with an extra tab to attach the ends together). For the orange parts I glued in panels of tissue paper and drew the designs with black Sharpie. The lanterns are the same on the opposite sides (two designs per lanterns), so I drew out my designs on scrap paper first & then traced that so they would be the same.



For the food we decided to make Hand-burgers, but were not able to find a good cookie cutter locally (only one tiny hand). If we had planned it far enough in advance I could have ordered one online, but with the short notice I had to make my own. I found a tip online that you could do this by buying a large cookie cutter, cutting it open & re-shaping it for your custom shape. I ended up having to use two & just duct taped the pieces together, since this is not something we'll use again, but you can also use food-safe adhesive or solder.



I forgot to get good pics of them, but they looked great & were pretty easy once you have a cookie cutter! They even stayed together well on the grill, which we worried about.



I also made this candy corn themed Cheesecake Mousse, which ended up being a mild disaster. I realized later that the cream cheese really needed to be warmed in order to mix smoothly with the other ingredients, but the recipe mentioned nothing about this. While they were still tasty, they were *full* of embarrassing chunks of cream cheese. Lesson learned!



Our friend Candice brought over these adorable Boneyard Brownies (complete with label!), full of clever tombstone names & gummy worms.



And here she is posing as the Tardis with her husband dressed up as Dr. Who! The part on top of her headband even glowed with a blinking blue light. Awesome costumes!