I love Halloween, and I am thrilled that it is gaining popularity in Australia. Not just he ancient Pagan festival of Samhain, but the modern commercial festival of Halloween. Read last years rant about it here, if you like; the short version is that I love a festival that brings families and communities together in a bit of fun. (Not to be confused with Samhain, which is more about bringing families and communities together in a bit of fun while we give thanks for the harvest and also have a chance to chat with the rellos that have passed on. I'm sorry, what? You are religiously intolerant? GTFO my page!)
This year I barely had time for either! Mr BC has a new job with long and changeable hours, so I feel like I'm flying solo a bit, which is a rude shock after having him work from home for the last dozen years. This Halloween I had a square tonne of laundry, some writing work, grocery shopping, and about 6 different errands to get through before school pick up, and then we had an away game of baseball followed by a long drive home in peak hour traffic before a Halloween feast and then, THEN I was off to drinks with some friends, before coming home and lighting a candle for the departed. Exhausting!
I had no time for decorating, and we wouldn't have been home to appreciate it, so I picked up this Haunted Gingerbread House from the supermarket. The kids LOVED putting it together, and it put them in a Halloween frame of mind. I also picked up some costumes for them - no trick or treating this year but the baseball game was to be a dress up event, and it was a lot of fun watching my little Ninja bat some great balls, and scoot around the bases. The other little axe murder victim wasn't so active, but he did manage to enjoy the Halloween Candy that the baseball mums had bought along. As for the traffic home, it was truly horrendous.
Friday night is normally pizza night in the Chaos household, so I made a few pizzas extra spooky for the boys to dig into while they watched a mini mildly spooky movie marathon of Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice. The recipe is here, but it's dead easy (Ha! Pun!), just use your favourite pizza dough and get creative with the toppings. This year Dead Man was heartless, but had his usual bacon skin and capsicum ribs, this year he also had spaghetti guts for some extra gore.
I loved the way the Sugar Skull Pizza turned out. I bought some rotisserie chicken to tie in with a voodoo theme, and it worked because although it's delicious, I think it's one of the grossest things you could possibly eat. If I had more time I would have gotten a bit detailed with the toppings. These photos are before I covered them in cheese, after that they looked like they had the worst skin condition ever!
This was such a no brainer, and I think it was the favourite of the day. Lollies + Jelly = Happy Children, at least in this house.
I bought these tarts from the supermarket, topped them with a chocolate marshmallow and used some leftover black icing from the haunted house kit to make legs and eyeballs. Cost less than $5 and took about 5 minutes. Yummy!
After this I took off for a well earned cocktail, and had the best time people watching with a bunch of girlfriends while Mr BC watched movies at home with the boys. It was fantastic to see so many adults dress up, and everyone seemed to be having a blast. There where witches, dark angels and white angels, werewolves, vampires, witch doctors, goth fairies and zombies all over the dance floor. I think Halloween is so fun because it allows people to dress up in ways that they feel they should dress every day. Looking at the witches and goth fairies in particular, there was almost a sigh of exultant relief about them. It's a shame people can't just be themselves, isn't it?
The next morning I woke up to find the Haunted Ginger bread house looking like this, which is fine because it is just what I wanted for breakfast anyway. How was your Halloween? Hope you had a good one.
xx
