Happy Halloween!

Yesterday was one of our favorite holidays, Halloween! Our neighborhood was swarmed with spooky trick-or-treaters, some young and cute, some older and creepy...not in a "that's a great scary costume" way, if you get what I mean! Anyways, we love living in our neighborhood because of its great and spirited Halloween character! 

For the past few years, we have thrown a party to celebrate the night. Since I showed you how to make our outside festive (Our Little Haunted House), I will now show you how to add some Halloween character to your table:

This table can be done easily, you just need a few spooky items to make it pop! For the table cover, I found a spooky table cloth at TJ Maxx - great place for Halloween/Fall home decor (look in September if you don't want it too picked over). On top of it, I put a chalkboard table runner - it comes in a big roll and you can cut off what you need. It is my new favorite party staple and you can buy it locally at Social Manor. Great way to add decorations and to label the food items! The pumpkin pom-poms were from the Martha Stewart Craft section at Michaels, loved how they turned out! For the sweets: we added pretzel sticks to the Oreo cookies to make spiders, my grandma made mini pumpkin cupcakes (yum!) and we put trail mix into the test tubes (also Martha Stewart). For other snacks we had delicious dips (made by my friend Paige), chips, and popcorn (of course with fall colored M&Ms). In the kitchen we had a crock pot of chili, an easy to make fall staple that people love.

For drinks, I mixed cider and champagne, which was a delicious spin on the classic mimosa! Dustin made "mangria" which is made of the following: grape vodka, red wine, orange juice, splash of lemon and cup of sugar - dangerous! I had them set out on my bakers rack, which I made into a fun bar for the dining room. Black and orange Solo cups are an easy way to add Halloween colors. I also love Martha Stewart's funny "poison" and "brew" labels for wine bottles. Lastly, cute paper straws are now a usual staple for any party...

Hopefully that helps you next year with party ideas! If you are a local friend or family member, you know you can just come by our party and enjoy!

One of the reasons we love to have people over is so they can help us hand out candy. We have averaged about 1000+ trick-or-treaters the past couple of years...aka we sit on the front  porch stairs and pass out candy nonstop! It is a lot of fun though and you do see a lot of great costumes. Last year, it seemed like the theme was zombie princesses, as in little girls took their princess dress from the year before and splattered red "blood" all over it....hmm, adorable? Never would have thought to do that to my princess dresses, but you know kids these days! This year we saw a lot of "muscular" super heroes, Despicable Me Minions (love!) and nerdy girls. The fun part when sitting outside is trying to decide whether the adult walking towards you is here for the party or here to trick-or-treat. My mom tried to give a Mary Poppins candy and it turns out it was Hailey! Then we had some weird teenagers ask if we were having a costume party, I told them it was too bad they didn't wear a costume...seriously if you are going to trick-or-treat after grade school, at least get a costume. There are some good possibilities out there, why wouldn't  you wear a costume?? 

One of my favorite parts of the night was looking at all my friends' and cousins' babies in their costumes...so cute! My cousins' baby girls were a black cat, Raggedy Ann and Minnie Mouse:

 

So adorable, unlike our costumes:

Don't worry, we met at a Halloween party 7 years ago and fell in love looking ridiculous! What where you for Halloween?? Post a comment to give others ideas for next year!

Lots of Love,