Halloween Memories

Don't worry you are not reading the title wrong and you certainly didn't click on the wrong date. 

Considering how much time I have to make up for here (and how stinking cold it is outside) I have been spending some time going over and organizing old photos. 

Like this gem of my two boys:

Long story short, I have a ton of photos from holidays and parties we had throughout the year that I haven't done anything with, but I thought it would be fun to share and to cheer myself up with this blustery winter night. 

One of my favorite holidays (who am I kidding it is my favorite holiday) is Halloween. I love the whole creepy movie, cool costumed, trick or treating lot of it. Which is why I spent months planning the perfect party. And what better party for Halloween than a little murder mystery?

I spent a good month working out characters and a plot for our party. Then I hand stamped and personalized all of my invitations and included a character bio inside so that no one would know anything about anyone else until they got to the party.  I also spent about a month cutting out all of these stupid bats, but it was a nice touch.

Hubby and our good friend Justin helped out with the decorations and last minute set up. Hubby was especially helpful at calming me down when time was running out and I was hyperventilating over a hot stove trying like hell not to burn another round of sugar for lollipops. Justin was also so nice as to be my rather convincing murder victim. (He had the genius idea of sneakily popping an alka seltzer in his mouth and pretending he was "poisoned" Genius!) 

Everyone showed up dressed to the nines and acted out their characters perfectly. Adam was the butler and I went as the maid so that I could keep a handle on refreshments and keep the ball moving. Here are our friends Eric and Liz in their full 1940's regala. 

Everything went off without a hitch (well except when our "detective" couldn't detect his way out of a paper bag, but I digress.) The mystery was eventually solved and everyone had a lot of fun. Once the murder mystery part was finished, we moved onto my favorite part: The scary movies and, more importantly, the food!

These were my vampire bite cupcakes, which I ate about ten of before the guests had even arrived.

These were my shattered glass"suckers". These were such a super pain in the butt to make. I started off trying to make them into blood sample slides ala Dexter but a dull knife and time ticking by made me alter my plans. I think these came out much nicer this way.

I will say, though, next time I will label all of my treats. Most of our guests thought these were decorations and not edibles so I had a big sticky plate of them leftover the next morning.

We had a bunch of different drinks and Adam manned the bar. This was a cider recipe from Martha Stewart which I had been dying to try.  It was so freaking delicious I rushed out the next day and bought the supplies to mix up more.

We also had "blood punch" which was cherry and orange punch with some gingerale mixed in. I don't know if it shows up very well in the photos but we froze a glove full of water to make a floating ice hand for added fear factor.

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the inside of this cake because it was a blood red velvet and so delicious! I am not a big cake fan (I love making them, not eating them) but it was so so good I didn't mind sneaking a piece. 

 We also decorated a bunch of jars full of candy with icky spooky names like zombie teeth or witches toes. Just cute little added touches. 

There was so much food and so much fun that it makes me wish Halloween wasn't nine months away. Ah well, just more time to plan right?

I will leave you with this little antedote:

In order to spook up the space a bit (and to hide basement clutter from party goers), hubby and I hung frosted drop cloths all over the room. Then we back lit them with blood red lightbulbs and hung a bunch of creepy ghost photos up around them.

Which was all well and good except we didn't undecorate as quickly as I had hoped. So I spent the next few weeks giving myself a heart attack every time I ventured downstairs to do the laundry and I was met with swaying shadowy curtains, dark blood red lighting, and a room full of these staring back at me from in the dark :

-Bee