6th annual halloween party

every year, we try to rise to new heights of creativity with our halloween party. i do my part in the area of refreshments and husband does things like moving the target shooting indoors (yes, upstairs above the new kitchen, they shot at cans) and building a pulley system so they could hoist one another up to look at a selection of items that were up high and try to remember as many of them as possible. the girls put together creepy candy bags in rubber gloves.

inspired, as always, by pinterest, i sent karoline out to cut me some sticks for my caramel apples.

we don't have kraft caramels here, so i had to make homemade (thank goodness). it took time, but it is out-of-this-world delicious. besides, it takes time to unwrap all those kraft caramels from their plastic wrappers too and at least this way, i knew went into them.

i had a bit of the 7-minute frosting left from the cupcakes and dipped the last apples in that when i ran out of caramel. it's funny, those four were the ones that went first.

a vampire came by and bit into each of our cupcakes. the cupcakes were chocolate, into which i threw a big bowlful of freshly-picked raspberries (our unseasonably warm temperatures mean the raspberries are still going strong). with cream cheese frosting, they were delicious.

cookie cutters and ready-made puff pastry sprinkled with poppy seeds and a spicy seasoning made for light little airy critter snacks.

and coolest of all chicken wing "bats." we told the kids that we'd gotten lucky out at the butcher in farre and were able to source some fresh bats for the party. a number of them believed it and wouldn't eat them. bwah-ha-ha.  a good time was had by all, even tho' they're in 7th grade now and some have to pretend to be bored. they weren't.

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this will make you want to fix breakfast for dinner.

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laura's piece on the politics of food will get you thinking about what you put on your table.
it's worth the time it takes to read it thoroughly.

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just when you thought sarah palin couldn't get any dumber, she says this.
and i link to it even tho' snopes says it's a hoax.
it's still pretty plausible for her.

these are the things we will remember

building a trampoline in the waning hours of sunshine on an autumn day.
carving awesome pumpkins.
the first jump on the new trampoline.
a basket of baby bunnies.

annual halloween parties.

scary (in a good way - for halloween) uncles.

treasure hunts.

broken pinkies.

chasing the chickens away from the cat food.

life. lived. every day.

what are you going to remember?

perfect pumpkin

not a perfect photo of it, but i had to share. this is my favorite pumpkin. ever. and now there're only 9 to go....

an excuse for bunny photos

we don't have a black cat for halloween, but we do have a black bunny

is it just me or is this week FLYING by? we've got our big (and i mean big! 30+ kids!!) annual halloween party on saturday, so i've been running around trying to secure enough pumpkins and now we've got to get carving. i'm so glad that pumpkins are readily available in denmark now. i remember my first year here, they were impossible to find and i paid an amount that still makes me feel a little bit faint for a single, oddly pale pumpkin in a florist shop. now they're at roadside stands for $5 apiece.

despite living in the countryside, it's been quite an ordeal getting our hands on a whole small pig to roast for the party. i kind of thought it would be a matter of asking the neighbor, who would spread the word and then one would magically appear on our doorstep, but it's been a bit more difficult than that. we did, however succeed and we will pick up our pig tomorrow afternoon and slow-grill it all day saturday. a whole pig serves the double purpose of being a bit scary for the halloween party and also delicious.

yesterday, as we embarked on our pumpkin mission, sabin managed to slam her left pinkie in the car door and we ended up spending the better part of the evening at the emergency room, waiting to have it looked at. tho' it was 4.5 hours we'll never have back, it did turn out to be broken, so we were glad in the end that we had gone to the ER. the worst part of the waiting was when my iPhone ran out of battery (sabin didn't have hers along) while we were playing chuzzle and then we didn't have anything to do but sit around missing our baby bunnies. when husband tried to saw off his finger a couple of months ago, there was almost no waiting - we were in and out in under and hour and he even had stitches.  the lesson in that? if you're going to get hurt, do it on a friday, not a wednesday.

gratuitous cute bunny photo - smilla is very photogenic.

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i'm really excited (and grateful) about the positive response to our handmade holiday eCourse.

there are still a few spots left, so please join us!

sabin and i are having so much fun preparing it.

scenes from a halloween party

it's really cool when i think back to ten years ago when i first came to denmark...at that point, i paid a small fortune for a single pumpkin at a florist shop and no one knew what halloween was. now, pumpkins are everywhere and the toy shops are full of halloween costumes. so, when we warned our street with a note that we were sending 20 second graders around trick or treating on friday evening, only one called and said that there was no way we could possibly inconvenience them in that way. the others (who were home) were totally cool...making a big effort to either have candy or spooky treats (glow-in-the-dark spider rings), some of them even dressing up and taking pictures of all the kids.  so heartening and the kids had a total blast!

here are the highlights:

sabin's spooky spider-web ghost costume

is that a zombie or just a dentist's wet dream?

these two pretty scared of the zombie.

"i'm just a little kitty cat!"

husband secured a real pig's head.

it was a BIG hit.

especially among the GIRLS.

girls are cool and science-y.

and won't at all need extensive therapy after this.

however, I MIGHT.

i wonder what he was saying to them?

do you suppose any of the kids will be allowed to come next year?

just the eyelashes

i haven't packed a thing, it's 10:37 p.m. and i have to head for the airport at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow, so just two quick pix of the highlights of the halloween party (more tomorrow from the lounge in AMS)...and ok, so the highlights are all about ME. :-)  or maybe they're about the eyelashes.

seriously, i think i'm going to wear them all the time...