This is Halloween

This past Saturday, we held our annual Halloween Gala! I tried to keep the crowd a bit smaller this year, under 20 people, so we could have fancier food and drinks, be more comfortable and people could mingle more easily.

Though I had started to decorate the house a few weeks ago, the finishing touches were put together Friday and Saturday night. I took a few notes from this year's Halloween magazines (though admittedly it was slim pickings!) and decided to do individual drink bottles with witch silhouettes. We were unable to find any that were perfectly clear though, so we gave them a good coat of black and I hand drew each witch on with a white paint pen before we funneled some rummy witch's brew into them and capped them. Yup, you had to use a bottle opener if you wanted a crack at the good stuff!

For the first time since I started hosting parties, I actually put more effort into my costume than just putting on a hat with stuff from my closet. Out of the blue about two weeks ago, I decided I wanted to be Medusa and so I began to gather supplies for my costume: a $3 piece of fabric, a $1 bag of rubber snakes and $5 worth of makeup for a costume costing me nearly nothing! The process was a bit longer than just 'tie on bedsheet, stick snakes in hair' though. It took me forever to get my toga tied in a way that was comfortable and a bit more fancy than a straight drape to the floor. Then, I braided my hair in several chunks and pinned it crazy all over my hair before bobby pinning snakes through the mes of braids - the silver headband acted as my crown. The makeup is just really dramatic liners, false eyelashes and scales that I applied with the use of vegetable netting, my fingers and some green eye shadow: I held the bag taut with one hand and then rubbed eyeshadow over it with my fingers. Ta-da!

Joe opted to go as Hellboy, a costume he used a few years back but really enjoyed doing again. As you can see, he plays the pancake loving red dude fairly well! He even made his own hand of Doom out of junk we had in our recycling bin.

We had a good variety of costumes on our guests too and lucky us, a unicorn even graced us with her presence! So, without further ado, some more photos from our gala!

The only part that's ever really sad after our party is that to me, anyway, it feels like Halloween has happened and it's over with. I know Samhain is still right around the corner, that I'll be doing stuff that night, but the celebration, the magic I love to share with others is over and I sort of (please don't throw rocks at me) am already prepared to start un-decorating with the exception of the Autumn stuff that I leave up through November. That said though, I'm ready to start scheming for next year's gala!