Halloween Pics/Recipes, Pretty Bad is Featured Book and More!

As promised, here are some pics from my daughter's Halloween Party. We had a great time -- and the food was a hit. I got the recipes from FamilyFun.com (you don't honestly think I'm this creative on my own, do you?) but the decorations were all me and the kids :-)

This first picture is from the front of my house, from our "graveyard" that we set up. We add to it, it seems, a little every day. That one has been a lot of fun. There's now also an "ENTER IF YOU DARE" sign up. By the time my youngest gets done, the trick-or-treaters will be terrified ;-)

Okay, on to the party and the really gross (but yummy!) food.

First off, the Monster Toes. They looked SO GROSS, which was, of course, the point. :-) Just like little toes. I used Lil Weiners (Ekrich brand here) and taco size tortillas (one package of ten was enough to cover these). Slice those ends really thin, so you get it to look like a toenail. The recipe said to cook them at 350 for 8 minutes, but I had prepared these ahead of time and covered them with a damp paper towel in the fridge (so the tortillas wouldn't dry out) so they took a few minutes longer than that. Way, way, way gross looking.

Next, the Mummy Pizzas. We used mozarella sticks to make the "bandages," which was really easy, and I didn't bother with the green peppers for eyeballs. I knew the kids wouldn't eat them anyway, LOL. The olives were enough and after a while, we started finding some misshapen olives in the can, so that made for some funny mummies, too.

I also bought some blue cupcakes (no way, with all the party prep was I going to actually BAKE cupcakes and frost them!) and then put eyeball candies in them. I saw that Semi-Homemade lady do that, but she baked hers and did white frosting, then added red frosting for bloodshot eyes. More work than I had time for ;-).

I made the Putrid Punch with the floating gummy worms (I added gummy worms to the cupcakes, too). I had bought the lemon-lime Kool-Aid, then lost the package, so we used Lemonade flavor instead and it tasted fine, so you can substitute that just fine. The gummy worms were pretty impossible to see, FYI, and they sink to the bottom, unless you make the ice cubes pretty big.

We bought a cheap fog machine and I put my youngest in charge of that. I also decorated the house with the wallpaper you can get at Halloween stores and all kinds of leftover Halloween costumes (we put a reaper mask on my heron, for instance). It was pretty cool. We played scary music on the computer, and kept the party to two rooms. The kids played "mafia," which is a card game kind of like "Clue" that goes really fast. They also did a mummy wrap race, with cheap toilet paper. THAT was hilarious. Then they all went to the haunted house and got out of my hair for a while, LOL.

All in all, a great time.

And then this week, I almost forgot to mention!! PRETTY BAD is the featured book at http://www.dearreader.com/ -- it's the romance pick for the week!!!

Here's me for the Halloween Party, BTW. In my regular dress ;-)

Shirley