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| spooky cookies |
Normally I involve the kids when we plan events. They help to plan menus and to decorate the house with me. But this time I wanted them to be surprised. It drove Meryn crazy. She kept asking why she couldn't help to organize the party. I urged her to just enjoy the day. It's not her strong suit; she's a planner just like her momma!
On Hallowe'en Friday we set off to school from a very normal looking house. Meryn and Colin were dressed as Hermoine and Ron from Harry Potter. We've been reading the books for the past year and they are both hooked on the world of Hogwart's. We even dyed Colin's hair red for the occasion. He looked awesome!
I stayed to participate in the Hallowe'en parade around the school and to enjoy a quick breakfast in Colin's classroom afterward. And then I dashed home! I had exactly six hours to make magic happen!
First up were the decorations. I had been collecting and storing decorations for the previous few weeks in our storage room. This is no mean feat in Argentina a country not known for it's Hallowe'en celebrations. Luckily (and sadly) I have a fellow expat friend who is moving and I was able to buy a ton of Hallowe'en decorations from her that she had collected for years. I also stumbled on one cotillon (the local name for a party supply store) in Buenos Aires that put up an amazing collection of spooky decorations. We were set.
I spent the next couple of hours transforming our house in a spooky enclave. There was the three foot wide spider made of Christmas lights that scuttles around the floor, an owl and a cat with glow-in-the- dark eyes and a gravestone that lifts out of the ground. I put up bats and skeletons and ghosts. There were cobwebs everywhere. Our house has security shutters which I lowered to make it as dark as night and completed the effect with two black lights. I also downloaded spooky Hallowe'en sounds and played them continuously on the stereo. It looked and sounded eerie.
Then I got started on the food. It had to be oooouchy, as my kids would say. A couple of days beforehand I spent a day in the kitchen to hammer out some of the more time consuming foods. I made gingerbread men and decorated them to look like skeletons. I baked cupcakes. Once the kids were in school I decorated them to look like brains. I just tinted white icing a light orange colour and made squiggly lines for an icky effect! Tasty . . . I also made homemade strawberry lemonade and added raisins and gummy worms into the pitchers to make it look buggy. I knew that the kids were all having class parties during the day so I put out a huge vegetable tray and for a finale I made hot dog mummies. They were hot dogs wrapped in strips of dough that looked as though they were mummified! Very cute and easy.
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| Ouuuchy Treats |
The third element of the party were the games. The first game was just enjoying the "haunted-ness" of the house. Once I led the kids through the house I sat them down had them stick their hands into bowls of unknown origin . . . guts (jello), brains (spaghetti) and eyeballs (peeled grapes). While the house was still dark we played monster freeze dance. The kids loved whooooping it up to songs like Thriller, Ghostbusters and the Monster Mash. Our living room was a heaving disco!
At this point they needed food and we turned on the lights to find the feast that was already set out on the dining room table and waiting for them. They loved it! After we ate they bobbed for apples (and they ate those too . . .) and then they spent the rest of the afternoon running relay races and playing dodge ball in their half disheveled costumes.
One by one the kids filtered home. They parted with trick or treat bags filled with candy from Canada that Michael brought back from a business trip. I'm not sure who had a harder time parting with that, us or the kids. The last girls to leave were Liana's. Liana and Jules were away for the weekend playing polo and the girls came with their grandma. When I came back from letting kids out, I found our four kids playing games in the backyard with her. Is there anything better? They were as happy as little clams.
Michael was able to sneak away from the office early and came into the scene around the bobbing of the apples. Later that evening when everyone was gone he said to me, "you know you need to do this every year now . . . "
I can't wait! Happy Hallowe'en! ✿ Micheline
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A spooky spider in the dark . . .
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