halloween

Halloween 2017

November 1, 2017

Halloween is my favorite holiday.

I just love the fun festivities for the night. And the costumes are tons of fun.

I bought Autumn an Elena of Avalor costume early on from Costco since they have great costumes for awesome prices there. She wore this to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and loved it, but I made the unfortunate comment about it leaving glitter on everything. So that was no longer acceptable. Ugh. I kept telling her that it was no big deal and that last Halloween’s costume did the same. They basically all do. It’s a Halloween thing.

Still not cool.

So, then we got her a plain witch costume. Perfect! But she stole my broom.

Then she found out her friend, Kenzi, at school was going to be Elsa, so we had to go through the dress up bin and pull out an Anna costume for . The pair are so fun together.

So Autumn was 3 things for Halloween related festivities.

And Hunter was a cow. No complaints there!!!

Nor did he complain when we put him in a pumpkin that our neighbor had for her son, who is just 2 weeks older than Hunter.

I was a ‘Basic Witch’, which is just a play on ‘basic bitch’. I bought my shirt from the Everfitte shop on Etsy, and paired it with a black tulle skirt. While at a Halloween Party, I carried around my “This Might Be Wine” mug from Brim Papery, which of course had wine in it. I just stuck with a travel mug for my roadie on Halloween so I didn’t run the risk of breaking my beloved mug.

Price was a grim reaper for a party we went to, but ditched the costume for taking the kids trick or treating.

Autumn scored tons of candy, and loved giving it out too. I made sure she said ‘thank you’ to everyone, so once I sent her back and they gave for more candy when she approached them again saying ‘thanks!!!”. ooph!

At least she had a blast with her friend Sophia and enjoyed her sugar high.

Loved every bit of this Halloween!!!!

Halloween. 2015

October 31, 2015

Autumn loves Minnie so much that when I found a Minnie costume that would fit actually fit her I snatched it up. Of course, I based our costumes off of her’s so Price was Mickey and I was Daisy Duck.

But first, we started our Halloween a day early as Autumn went to daycare in costume on Friday in a spider costume. She actually wears it regularly. ha!

Price and I were having a rough week so we decided to perk ourselves up by having tons of fun on Halloween.

As it is our last Halloween up here, we decided to go up to Salem to enjoy the festivities up here. Price and I had been once before for Halloween with our friends Emily and Peter and it was a lot of fun and really busy. We didn’t want to deal with the crazy crowds so we decided to go up for breakfast, enjoy the morning there, and head home before lunch.

We went to The Ugly Mug for breakfast. (thanks for thesuggestion Twitter Peeps!!) It was so good that we are already planning on our next visit there.

Minnie and Mickey!!!

After breakfast, we headed out to wander around Salem.

We first visited the Witch Trials Memorial before heading over to the adjoining Charter Street Burning Point.

I love the rich history that is scattered throughout New England. It’s incredible in Boston and the surrounding areas.

Boil Boil Toil and Trouble

Witches were everywhere!

At least this witch was a nice one!

I told Autumn to wiggle her nose like Samantha. She looked at me strange.

There is a fantastic exhibit called Stickwork at the Peabody Essex Museum that we will come back to visit in depth one day. Especially in the snow!

Also, they have another exhibit that we want to see one day so we will be back soon.

I will defiently miss Fall in New England when we move. I can’t stop taking pictures of the changing pictures so I can capture all the carious hues of greens, yellows, oranges, reds, and purples that fill the trees and sidewalks.

I mean, come on…

There was a festival for kids on the Salem Common. They had dressed up characters that Autumn loved/was scared of, games, bounce houses, and face painting.

The bounce house maze experience was greeted with so much enthusiasm (she tried to go in before it was fully set up!!) but some big kids (4 yo’s?) ventured back through and they didn’t mean to scare her but did so we had to yank her from the side and she clawed for her freedom. Poor Minnie!!

Hey dude. Thanks for settling Salem.

We wrapped up our Salem adventure with some more wandering around and some shopping just after 11am and headed home.

Autumn was so upset to be leaving but she was just over tired from the busy morning as the hysterics lasted a minute before she was passed out for the ride home.

Keep it up New England. You rock this time of year.

We carved our pumpkins in the afternoon after watching a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Halloween special (but of course!). Plus, I made an apple crisp and a frity flax oat bran bread. The house smelled so good from the baking and the hot cider we had warming on the stove.

Later on, Autumn and I went out for an hour for trick-o-treating. It was confusing to her but she had fun with it.

She was wiped out after it so she ended up going to bed at 6pm! Now that’s a great day!!!

Unfortunately we don’t get a lot of trick-o-treaters. It’s a nasty cycle in our neighborhood… kids don’t go here because people don’t hand out candy>>> people don’t hand out candy because kids don’t come here. This doesn’t sit well with me as I LOVE to hand out candy to kids in costumes.

I ended up calling my Dad to see what we would be getting ourselves into next year when we are down in FL with him and he had to just rub it in that he had 300 kids. OMG!!!!!

I’m thankful we had such a great day celebrating Halloween in Salem this year.Mickey, Minnie, and Daisy had a great Halloween!!!

Halloween Monster Cupcakes

October 27, 2015

Boo! Halloween is less than a week away and we are still scrambling with our costumes.

Well, we have Autumn’s all set as she is going at Minnie Mouse – of course! But Price and I are trying to figure out what to do for us. Get dressed up? Skip it? Do a family theme? Do whatever?

Ultimately, it will be fun as Autumn will love it, so it will be great but right now I’m all over the place.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Halloween but the dressing up part leaves me all panic-y until the last minute. We’ve had years when we have gone all out for parties but the past 3 years have been hard with either being super pregnant, having a wee one, and now a toddler who gets to bed at 6.30. Limits out trick or treating time, plus not many people give out candy by us, which is why we don’t get many, which is why I say to myself, why bother dressing up? I’m just in a quasi sick funk this week and need to shake it off!!

What are you doing? Are you getting dressed up? Skipping it? Handing out candy? Turning the light off?

I recently brought these Monster Cupcakes to Autumn’s daycare for the kids to enjoy. They enjoyed them as a fun afternoon treat to celebrate the upcoming Halloween.

These cupcakes are really easy to make. You can follow my instructions and use a boxed mix and cans of frosting, or you can make it all homemade. It just depends on your preference (and time constraints). You really can’t go wrong with how you decorate them either. It’s fun to be creative. Plus you can def involve kids!

Whip a batch of these frightfully delicious cupcakes for Halloween!!!

Halloween Monster Cupcakes

Makes 18 cupcakes

Ingredients

1 box of cake mix for the cupcakes, and accompanying ingredients
2 containers of frosting in bright colors
5 Twizzlers’ Pull and Peels candies
36+ eye candies

Process

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line 18 cavities of 2 muffin tins with cupcake liners.
Prepare the cake mix according to the package instructions.
Evenly portion out the batter in the 18 cupcake liners. Bake according to package instructions. (As you are putting a bit more batter in each cupcake to make 18, instead of 24, it might take a bit linger than the package instructions.)
Once the cupcakes have fully cooled, frost half with one color, and the other half with the other color.
Cut the Twizzlers in half, then half, and half again to create 8 1″-long pieces. Either fray the pieces by separating the 9 ‘fibers’ while leaving a bit connected at one end. Or completely separate the 9 ‘fibers’.
Decorate each cupcakes with 2-3 candy eyes and the Twizzlers pieces to make fun hair!

10.31-11.2: Weekend Recap

November 3, 2014

{Friday Night}

{Saturday}

{Sunday}

Halloween Oreo Brownies

October 30, 2013

Oreos are my Achilles’ heel.

Plus now I just love to get them because they are all Halloween-y and orange. So when you dunk them in milk your milk gets a slight orange hue to it.

Halloween Oreo Brownies_01

So the obvious thing to do is to make already devlish Oreos and dump a a whole lot of them into super rich brownies. Where’s my milk!?!?

These brownies are so most ooey gooey brownies ever. Like seriously, ever. It’s the butter, chocolate chips, and melty Oreos that keep these super soft in the center of the pan. Grab a fork or a spoon and dig in.

Don’t get intimidated by the bit of ‘work’ you have to do to gently fold everything into the eggs. It makes these brownies so soft and airy and gooey and delightful. As well, I suggest you do a better job at cutting up the Oreos than I did. If you have really big chunks it makes for lots of fun orange pockets but is more difficult to cut into.

I might just keep on buying these orange halloween Oreos for a bit longer since, you know, orange is very fall and I think we can pull off fall stuff until Thanksgiving. Oh boy, that’s fast approaching as well isn’t it?!?!?

Halloween Oreo Brownies_02

Halloween Oreo Brownies

Makes 16 brownies

Ingredients

3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
5 1/2 ounces unsalted butter
7 oounces semi-sweet chocolate ships
4 eggs
5 1/2 oounces light brown sugar
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
16 Oreo cookies, broken into pieces

Process

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8×8-inch baking pan with parchment paper with the paper overlapping the sides.
In a small bowl, combine together the flour, coco power, and salt, set aside.
Combine the chocolate and butter together. Gently heat to melt, whiling stirring often. Set aside to cool.
Beat the eggs in a large mixing bowl until they have tripled in volume. Add half the brown sugar around the outer edge of the eggs in the bowl (so you don’t knock the air out of the mix) and gently fold until incorporated. Add the remaining sugar again around the edge, and fold again for a few minutes until the mix is smooth and you can’t feel any sugar crystals in between your fingers.
Fold the melted chocolate into the eggs quickly to incorporate it.
Add the dry ingredients mixture, chocolate chips, and 1/3 of the crushed Oreos around the edge of the bowl and fold in until combined, taking care not to knock the air out. Pour the mix into the paper-lined baking pan. Scatter the remaining chunks of Oreo cookies over the top of the mixture, pressing some into the batter.
Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the middle is only slightly gooey.
Set the pan on a wire rack to cool completely. When cooled, lift the baking paper and brownies out of the pan and set on a cutting board. Cut into 2×2-inch squares (in half and then half again, both ways).

Adapted from Sugar and Snapshots