Halloween Party 2014

Kirsten : "So are you guys going to throw a Halloween party this year?"

Me : "Um I don't know, we weren't planning on it, but I guess we could?"

Kirsten : "You should cause I just came up with a GREAT family costume idea but we have nowhere to go..."

Me : "Let's do it. You guys co-host with us?"

Kirsten : "Yup"

And that is the story of how we decided to throw a big Halloween party this year. We invited all our friends and neighbors and spent the last few months making our costumes and a Halloween decorations. We had a hard time at first trying to come up with a good family Halloween costume idea. We were standing in Costco looking at the baby Halloween costumes when inspiration struck. How to Train your Dragon...so off to the fabric store we went.

For Connor's costume I was able to use a black hooded onesie. I researched quite a few tutorials on making dragon wings and found the best one here. Dave's costume was just patterned after some of his shirts. My costume on the other hand was so intense. All the tutorials I could find on Astrid were from cosplayers...which meant I had to hand make all my pieces out of clay and then hand paint them. That's 10 small bird sculls, 54 spikes, and 50 small brackets. Then I had to paint them all to look like metal and try to attach them to my skirt and pauldrons. My skirt probably weighed a good 20 pounds.

The kicker? Kirsten called me up after seeing my Pinterest Halloween board blow up with How to Train Your Dragon tutorial...

Kirsten : "So I'm pretty sure we're the same thing for Halloween"

Me : "REALLY? We're How to Train Your Dragon! What are you??

Kirsten : "Oh good, we're Valkyries and Vikings...so sort of not the same thing?"

Me : "Welp, too late now"

Kirsten : "Yup"

Normally the Walters keep their Halloween costumes a big secret until Halloween day to surprise everyone...so this year we got to find out early :) A few of our other friends also do Halloween day costume reveals so as the day approached we all started to worry that we were all going to be vikings...thankfully it turned out everyone came up with pretty unique ideas! We had the Lego Movie characters, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, some Bulvarians, Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother Wolf, Valkyries & Vikings, How to Train Your Dragon, Batman & Robin, and some pirates at our party last night.

It was fun to catch up with everyone (although we sorely missed seeing a few friends whose kiddos got sick this week). There was good food, good drinks, and great conversation. The kids played games and watched halloween Curious George while the adults actually had uninterrupted adult conversations. Crazy!

Most importantly: prizes were won!

• Best Couples Costume : Wes & Leslie as Little Red Riding Hood & Grandmother Wolf (Wes was Red)
• Most Creative Costume :
• Best Group Costume: The Walters as Valkyries and Vikings
• Best Kid's Costume : Connor as Toothless Nightfury
• Best Individual Costume :  Leslie (she literally came up with her costume hours before showing up)
• Honorable Mention: The Bannisters as Goldilocks and the Three Bears (those bear heads were seriously cool)

The food was also a lot of fun. People brought some pretty tasty items to share! I spent most of Thursday baking the spider cookies, rice krispie treats, and the sugar cookies. The sugar cookies were just a pre-made mix from Costco with your basic cream cheese frosting. The rice krispie treats were also just squared rice krispies dipped in melty chocolate and sprinkles. The spider cookies were actually from a standard peanut butter cookie recipe where I substituted in nutella (because I forgot to pick up peanut butter at the store). Truffle chocolates cut in half for the spider heads and then just standard store bought tube frosting for the legs and eyes. Oh yea and the punch! The punch was two big bottles of 7up, 2 cans of frozen lemonade, one packet of frozen strawberries and like 3 cups of gin?? SO GOOD.

Decorations were also hand made...this party has convinced me to really research a die cut machine because I hope to never cut out that many tiny things by hand ever again. I think Carson counted 140+ bats? Thankfully I had a tiny hole punch and a circle punch for the circle garlands :) My favorite part though was the photobooth. Kirsten found this awesome snarly old branch in her back yard and we strung it up with fishing wire...seriously so cool.

All in all it was seriously such a fun party! I think we may have to make this more of a tradition! Maybe do a better job getting invites out to the neighbors sooner (than the day before) next time! At least I get to box up all the decorations and save them...if there is a next time it won't be half so intensive!

Thanks to those that were able to join us for helping make the party such a success and so much fun! We missed those who couldn't come, maybe next time? :)