Halloween 2011 – Bringing It All Together!
Home » HOLIDAYS » HALLOWEEN »And finally I am able to write all about my Halloween 2011 Better Late Than Never Dinner Party!
Despite celebrating a few days late (hence the ‘better late than never’ dinner party title) we still put decorations up for Halloween on October 31st as we get quite a few Trick or Treaters down our road.
I bought a lot of new decorations in Michaels whilst I was in the US this year. I was in Halloween Heaven when visiting that shop (which is like a Hobbycraft) and I was only limited by the amount of weight allowance from our Airline!
I bought some wonderful candy corn fairy lights, which luckily were for outdoor use as well as indoor – I ended up having to string them around the front door (well, hubby did!) as I didn’t have any where to put them indoors! I also had to buy a step-down converter so that I could use them in the UK without blowing out the electrics!
In addition to the lights around the door, I also hung up a couple of decorations – a mummy and a skeleton in a cage. The mummy is supposed to moan and groan and shake when you get near it, but it wasn’t working properly – shame, wanted to scare the trick or treaters mwahahahah!
Another new decorative item this year was a graveyard set that I picked up for a tenner in Tesco. I got two uses for it – one outside on Halloween and then again inside for our dinner party.
And finally, of course, my pumpkins! I have been carving out pumpkins for many years now, following patterns that I’ve either found online for free, or that I’ve bought. This year, however, I made my own template! *Proud*
So this is the pumpkin that I created myself…I didn’t draw him though – that’s thanks to a picture online that I found and then transformed into a template to use to carve the pumpkin. For those that don’t know who this is, it is Eddie, the mascot for British metal group, Iron Maiden. I am very proud of this carving, and it took me the longest out of all of this years carvings to do because of the hours I spent converting the picture into a template to use!
And here are the rest of this years offerings to the Pumpkin Gods…
They all started life as pumpkins from the supermarket…this years produce available in the shops didn’t appear to be that great unfortunately as they were small and quite frankly, beat up :(
I also managed to grow a pumpkin this year! Last year was a bad crop – the slugs got to all of them, but this year, one survived! It wasn’t very big, but it was perfect, and my cat – called Pumpkin, needed to investigate!
People often ask me how I carve my pumpkins, and it really is as simple as marking out the pattern on the pumpkin, and then cutting away the sections to reveal the design. I lay the template on top and prick through with a needle to give me the guidelines, and then using my pumpkin carving tools (yes, there are such a thing!) I cut each section out.
With everything decorated, it was just a matter of waiting for the trick or treaters to come!
And whilst waiting I played around with long exposures on my camera with my husband playing the ‘ghost’
Lots of kiddies this year with their parents/guardians knocking at the door and all commenting about how cool the front of the house looked. Most people don’t bother to go all out for Halloween in the UK – but I do! They know that they can safely knock at our door and say “Trick or Treat” without getting the door slammed in their face!
With Halloween officially over, my attention turned of course to our dinner party a few days later. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know all about the invitations and menu and decor and here’s how it all came together…
Can’t have a dinner party without food!
[Bloody Mary Soup and Cheesy Cornbread]
[Ghoul-ash, Spooky Spuds & Poisoned Peas]
And of course, you can’t have a party without the people…
And that, dear readers is another Halloween over! I really enjoyed planning for this one, I think because it was so different to what I normally do. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about our Halloween celebrations – now onto Christmas – it’s only a few weeks away now!