A Halloween to Remember

Dear Apple Cheeks,

As the sun fell in a lavender-tinted sky, I stood back, watching as the two of you pranced from house to house, giggling with excitement, and for a moment, I felt like a little girl again. Sigh. Halloween night...whimsical, magical, and just plain FUN!

I love everything about Halloween, but the thing I love the most? The anticipation and the planning. Hosting parties is my THING, and our annual Halloween party is one of my favorites!

I planned for weeks, searching the Target aisles for the perfect decorations for our Halloween party: paper bats for the walls, spider webs for every surface, potion bottles filled with food coloring and plastic worms, fake eyeballs, and a flashing "zombie brain"....I didn't go overboard AT ALL. Obviously, I like to keep things simple. I mean, the brain was absolutely NECESSARY.

We planned the perfect menu, complete with a "graveyard" cookies and cream cake, chili dogs, crockpot broccoli cheese soup, and lots of fun little treats, like "spider eggs" (powdered sugar covered donut holes), and zombie brain cupcakes. But the piece de resistance??? Two words: DRY ICE. I will never host a Halloween party again without it. All of the kids (and adults) were fascinated, and it really pushed the party over the top! Perfect for our bubbly, spooky witch's cauldron.

I let the two of you stay up past your bedtime on Halloween Eve to help make desserts, and we giggled late into the night as we smeared pink icing onto funfetti cupcakes, trying desperately to make them look like brains. Not quite as easy as the Pinterest moms told me it would be, or maybe I am just terrible at cake decorating, but either way, it took SEVERAL attempts to make them resemble brains. Oh well, what this mama lacks in skill, she definitely makes up for in effort, and girls, that is what I hope you remember most from all of this. It isn't about perfectly decorated cupcakes, or the perfect decorations, or STUFF at all. It is about putting forth the effort to make something special for the people you love, and it is ALWAYS worth it. YOU are worth it, and I hope you know that I loved every minute of it!

And just so your mama keeps it real: this party did not go off without a hitch (do they ever?). In fact, it got a little crazy right before "go time". Let's just say that one of you precious children, who shall remain nameless (but I bet you can guess which one), threw an EPIC fit over getting your hair spray-painted, complete with screaming, LOTS of tears, and throwing your unicorn-clad self into a heap on the floor. It was NOT magical. It was ugly, and bonus: during the midst of painting THREE faces into the likes of a mermaid, unicorn, and deer, I was also trying to finish a pan of chili dogs and homemade pizza rolls, and ya know....DRY MY HAIR!!!! I may have thrown an epic fit myself, and showed up to my own party with partially wet hair, but like I said...WORTH.IT. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. The look on your faces when the witch's cauldron started bubbling over ALONE was enough to make it worth every tear, every smear of icing, every fake eyelash glued into place, and every single moment spent in preparation.

xoxo,
Mama

So, without further ado, here are a few highlights from our spooky, magical, perfectly imperfect Halloween night. It was EPIC....even more epic than a unicorn tantrum.

The spooky, bubbling, boiling witch's cauldron was the hit of the party!