Family Halloween Dinner 2009

my favorite thing about Halloween: caramel apples

the geek and little red riding hood make a cute couple

the R/C plane pilot

Spooky dead bride

a snack spread to die for

some ghoulish girls

the night of the living dead

no bones about it, this was a cool table setting

I couldn't tell you why exactly but Halloween is my family's favorite holiday. For as long as I can remember costumes and decorations have been a big deal for my mom. In grade school my sisters and I won one firehouse costume contest after another, and we decked out our basement as a haunted house every year of high school, and each year the guest list got longer and longer.

As we have gotten older, we have reserved our celebrations to more intimate family affairs. Our haunted dinners are an excuse to still dress up and eat weirdly delicious foods and decorate from floor to ceiling with cobwebs, streamers, bones and spiders galore. This year was no exception. Although Jeff and I wished to wear out pjs to the dinner party and just collapse on the couch after the meal, we should've known we wouldn't get off that easily. Upon arrival to my parents' house in "street clothes" we were soon cooerced upstairs to the costume closet to change. I'm secretly glad they got me motivated despite how tired I was at week's end because Halloween wouldn't be the same without a costume: no matter how pathetic and impromptu it may have been.

Mom made "bat wings and mummy toes" for dinner (chicken wings and pigs in a blanket) along with coleslaw, baked beans, and cornbread. For dessert we had chocolate covered pretzel rods and my favorite caramel apples. I love the ambiance and the comraderie of the occassion and I will miss it next year after they move to NC next month. Halloween will never quite be the same, so I had to be sure to document the tradition this year.