Happy Halloween!

Well, despite a few mishaps (including candle wax all over my favorite shoes and forgetting to take pictures of the whole evening!) our Halloween party tonight was a huge success. As of this morning, I figured that only about 5 people were going to show up, which was particularly disappointing because I had worked so hard to prep for this party! Equally disappointing was our lack of decorations. We have some indoor dec's for fall, but that's it. Then I decided to invite some more people from lab, and some people from church were suddenly able to come too. Total we ended up with 14 people, 12 of whom dressed up in costume!

The ambiance ended up very nice as well: some girls decorated our lab this morning, and said I could take home some of the decorations to use tonight. Then two girls from lab came over early to decorate so I could finish preparing food. We had spider lights and spiderwebs over the porch, and a comedic talking skull on a spear by the doorbell (which included such phrases as, "does this stick make me look fat?", "Oh come on, it's not like I'm going to chase you!", and, "The last thing I remember saying is,'Honey, put down that machete'"). Inside, there were spiderwebs and candles everywhere, and very low lighting. On the table was a candle centerpiece: a hand whose "flesh" and "blood" melt off when you light the fingers, revealing a bone skeleton. Very creepy and entertaining.

The food was on the counter, illuminated by our lovely under-the-counter lighting system (courtesy of my Dad) without distracting from the ambiance. We had bloody finger and eyeball cookies, pumpkin cobbler, cheddar apple pie dip, a meat and cheese tray, chips and salsa, etc. The punch was a spooky neon green Hawaiian Punch with Sprite, complete with ice in the shape of a human hand (a la my nitrile gloves from lab), served in our crystal punch bowl. The glasses were our wine glasses with black spider ring charms. The punch bowl was surrounded by spider webs and candles. Perfect.

We even got lots of super cute trick-or-treaters, who loved the talking skull! We got to hang out with many of our closest friends and meet some new ones! and we got to watch The Corpse Bride, which was very funny. I wish we had more pictures and less mess (especially wax!) to clean up, but all in all it was one of our most successful parties yet!