A Giants Halloween

Happy Halloween to my little Giants (and one Hulk). Congratulations to the Giants too! Can't wait till my boys join a baseball team, although I'm sure I'll regret saying that after the 4th weekend consumed by sports.

Halloween Recap, Finally

Halloween was surprisingly fun this year.  The kids always enjoy it, but I really have not had a reason to dress up in years. This year I was invited to two parties, although one was a little depressing due to the whole couple's costume thing and me with no date, and my husband would not have dressed up anyway, although he's usually willing to go as a soccer player, quite the stretch.  The other was just a handful of fun people from work, and I was the scariest, although we did have a rapping Jesus, and the hostess pulled out her blond and shocking pink wig which this guys really rocked. 

just makeup

We were even invited to a couple kids' parties, which I would have loved to attend.  Sadly one was cancelled due to an injury, but the little guy seems to be doing fine.  The other conflicted with what we hope is not a once in a lifetime opportunity, the Earthquakes playoff game!  All my boys went to that while I whipped up a batch of jello shots and rumballs and headed over to my party, where I was simultaneously cast as vampire and Carrie, although I was supposed to be a zombie. 

me, zombified

The highlight of Halloween may have been my discovery of the cool online photo editing site Picnik, where I impressed one and all with my mad "halloweening" of co-workers, friends and kids alike.  We pinned the photos up at a staff meeting, and everyone wanted to bring their pictures home.  The saddest part was this is probably the highest praise I've achieved at work for months, not to mention the most excitement around the symbolic water cooler.

Of course no Halloween would be complete without the elementary school parade.  Keegan finally agreed to being a laundry basket, after a four year sales pitch, and Donovan switched his costume around several times, finally settling on skeleton pirate after stealing the hat and scope I was sporting to work on Friday. 

Happy Early Halloween

Vewy Scawy Tigres! Just reliving mah babies 1st and 2nd halloweens.

Ghost Cake

I started back at work this week, and I'm sure my group is happy to have my marketing skills, not to mention I'm the only one who can provide an unlimited supply of small children stories. What they miss the most, though, is being the taste testers for all my baking experiments. My buddy loves her some red velvet cupcakes, and I used the new food blog search to find this recipe from Andreas Recipes. All the red velvet cake recipes seem to be similar, although I've made marscapone-whipped cream based frosting, cooked frosting (which is incredibly light due to the 15 minute beating time), and this one from Andrea which is simply butter, cream cheese, sour cream (I used full fat greek yogurt) and powdered sugar. Next up is a side to side taste test of the two frostings.

Isn't it a pretty color? This was 2 oz of Wilsons no-taste red food coloring. I put the whole jar in since I used extra cocoa. I like the addition of coffee instead of water to dissolve the cocoa and coloring. I also loved reading all the Red Velvet cake controversy. I also have it on good authority that Red Velvet since to be the choice for the most serious of cake wrecks.

Even with all the mixing I still ended up with this tie-dyed look, although the last two were perfect. Yes, I cooked two trays of ghosts, then one tray with two lonely ghosts.

Friendly, tasty ghosts.

Happy Halloween!!

The Obligatory Halloween Photos

Pretty darn scary, aren't they? We've got your battle ready ninja and bad dude Darth Maul.

And here's a grainy photo of Donovan showing off his pumpkin.

I am pretty darn proud of my first template attempt, note the skull there, with the face designed by Keegan (except the eyeballs, I added those) on the flip side. We made good use of the free Disney potato head pieces to add the piece de resistance. And it's hard to tell, but Brian's actually says "Boo!" and the O's are the eyes.

Art for Halloween - Pt 2: How to Draw an Owl

Make an oval as big as your paper. Draw smiley faces down here. Draw an upside down triangle for the beak. Draw three little curves for each foot. Then you have an owl.

How NOT to make an Incredible Hulk costume. Don't ya love the big muscles belly, and the large feet flippers.

Art for Halloween - Part I

I seem to be spending a lot more time with Donovan these days, so all my posts are about him. Keegan's still around, though, just hanging out with Daddy a lot. The result, though, is Keegan really attaches himself physically to me when he is around. I love it, since it's so nice to see him, but fear for his safety when his "younger but bigger and stronger" brother Donovan insists on wedging himself in between us.

This ghost is dreaming, about a baby ghost, and a "category" with a horse. My son has taken to making up words, which sound like perfectly real words. A "category" is a stage in a school. And not the two moons.

His brother is still the crafter in the family, but Donovan has brought home more "projects" in one month at his new preschool that his whole last year.

So cute, and they tasted yummy

Okay, I'm way late for my Halloween recap, but later posts will tell you why, I swear. Here are the day old jack-o-lanterns, which my husband pretty much carved single-handedly for his lazy family.

First we had the YMCA party, which included free pumpkin fraps from Starbucks and a haunted house so scary the little guy dropped his playdough.

Here's K's most excellent after-school care teacher handing out ping pong balls to these adorable fierce Storm Troopers Clone Troopers for the mock goldfish toss.

Check out the "break the balloon with a body part" game. Guess which body part they spun?

Here's D in the donut eating contest. He took over for his older brother who's taste buds can't handle sweets without chocolate.

We leave the Storm Troopers behind for the next party, a mom's club ones that's always a crowded nightmare blast. How cute is this puppy. What you can't see is how short the legs are. Yes, D opted for his ebay dalmatian costume from 2 years ago. They just could not decide what to wear, so I stuck everything in a bag and sent them over to grandmas to decide. I am so not getting any new costumers next year.

For some reason I keep attempting rolled and shaped sugar cookies. I made a decent batch for camping and left them in the car. Score 1 for the office. What you see below (to the left, duh) is the best of a night and a day of baking. Considering what other moms brought, not sure why they didn't use mine. Score 2 for the office. And they still tasted good, some people like them crunchy, really.

A historic event here. The very first time D actually sat down and did a craft at this party. I asked him ahead of time if he wanted to do a project or just run around madly in his puppy costume. He chose the latter, but did stop just long enough to put stickers on a pumpkin.

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. We chose to trick-or-treat with a buddy in our neighborhood, where I believe we made up about 85% of the kid out there, but these guys didn't care. They had a blast. And yes, that's costume # 3 if you were keeping track.