Aunt Megan's Annual Halloween Party - 1st Installment

So last Friday was Aunt Megan's Annual Halloween Party. I believe it was the 6th year I've done this. As I was frantically running around trying to get things out and directing the fun, I didn't get to take any pictures. Fortunately, I'm part of a "picture-taking" family and so my brother Jeff snapped away for me. He's supposed to come over tonight and bring all the pictures so I'll have to post them in the 2nd installment.

Till then, you can watch the magic show. For the entertainment portion of our evening I invited the kids to each prepare a magic trick to share. They loved performing and we had a blast watching them perform. Check out the video...

Happy Halloween - Did you know...

It's that time of year...

I realized that I haven't posted in a while. In my head, it's not post worthy if I don't have a photo to go with it...I'd better change my thinking because I haven't had time to drag out my camera very often recently.

So my favorite holiday is fast approaching - HALLOWEEN! I've started thinking about what I want to do for Aunt Megan's Annual Halloween Party. The invitations will have to go out soon.

Last year I delivered candy in coffins:


So I'm going to have to come up with something good this year. I got my Martha Stewart Halloween magazine this week, so I've started to dog-ear the pages with great ideas. She's got an awesome wreath that I'm going to have to make (I looked all over her website for a picture of it and I can't find one to share with you). Its a grapevine wreath, spray painted black. Then she took a bunch of rubber snakes, spray painted them black and then twined them through the wreath. Hang on your door with a big black bow. It looks wonderful!

Last year the spooky dinner took back seat to the games. We had worms in a bun...


I'm going to have to give the menu you some more thought. My biggest challenge is that I have some very picky eaters that come to my party. I have been thinking about a Harry Potter themed party, but I'll probably hold off another year until more of the kids have read the books.

As far as the games, last year we did some ghost bowling, which was a ton of fun. I'm going to have to come up with something else. It's kind of nice that the kids are getting a little bit older so the games can require a bit more thought.
If you have any suggestions for my halloween party, I'd love to hear them!!!!!

Aunt Megan's Annual Halloween Party - Highlights

It was a blast! This year's Aunt Megan's Annual Halloween Party was great -- great food, great kids, great costumes, and great fun. If I do say so myself. Here are some of the photo highlights.

M&M Dark Chocolate Halloween Movie Game

Couple years back my brother Ryan and I found this online game posted by M&M. Each Halloween I go looking for it because it's a lot of fun, and it's a challenge to see how much I remember from the previous year.

The game consists of trying to identify horror movies by a single illustration. M&M has ingeniously created a fully illustrated scene that hides about 50 different horror movie titles. Some of them are obvious (picture of a bunch of lambs wearing ear-muffs = Silence of the Lamb), others not so obvious. Part of the challenge is the fact that I've probably only seen about 10% of the movies -- I hate scary movies. But I do know the titles of most of the movies, the rest I just have to guess at based on the image and then cheat by Googling.

The first time I tried it it took me almost 3 hours to get them, and I had to solicit a ton of help from other people. One of the nice things about the game is you can pause it and come back to it another day. The last time I tried it I think I got just under 50 minutes.The above picture is just a screen shot of the game. You really should try it. It's a lot of fun. Just click on the picture above and it will take you to the game.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween - Halloween - My Favorite Time of Year

I Love Halloween!

I really, really do! Who doesn't love a holiday where people give out free candy and you get to dress-up anyway you want, call it a costume, and wear it around all day and have people tell you how "Spectacular" you look. :)

I'm getting ready for my Annual Aunt Megan's Halloween Party, next Wednesday. And I decided I wanted another excuse to try some more Halloween recipes, and get more mileage out of my decorations, so I'm throwing a little Visiting Teacher "Gouhl's Night Out" with ghoulish desserts next week as well.

Here are the invitations to the Annual Aunt Megan Halloween Party:
I made little paper coffins, filled them with gold coins and skulls and pumpkin candy, and wrote the invite inside of the lid. The coffin was super easy to make. I got the pattern from Martha Stewart. Here's the coffin pattern. It would be totally cute with double-sided paper, maybe next year.

Then I found this awesome recipe for cinnamon candy popcorn - ya know that stuff the Harry & David's makes called Moose Munch that tastes wickedly good but they charge ya like $8 for a quarter-cup. Well, while cruising my favorite recipe photo site (admit it, you eat with your eyes first, if there isn't a great picture with the recipe you won't try it) Taste Spotting, I saw a recipe for the popcorn. The "Our Best Bites" site calls it "Cinnamon Carmel Corn with Pecans and White Chocolate" -- I call it freakin' delicious. So rather than post the recipe, I'm going to send you on over to Our Best Bites and just show you the pictures of the finished popcorn that I made today. I won't tell you the bowl is not empty, cuz it's not...I swear! ;)

I did add a small Halloween flair -- just before I drizzled the white chocolate on the cooled popcorn I tossed in Halloween m&m's and I also drizzled semi-sweet chocolate along with the white chocolate. Strictly for aesthetic reasons! ;)