Every year we undertake a maddening endeavor: a Halloween party of such magnitude that only those with questionable sanity would attempt it. Okay, maybe it’s not quite elaborate enough to be a product of lunacy, but it’s a ridiculous amount of work: sewing costumes, decorating every possible surface of two floors of our house, buying and wrapping prizes, organizing games and contests. Preparations start months in advance and cleanup takes weeks if we are diligent and months if we are not. If you can’t imagine how putting on such an event would take so much time it’s because you have never tried it.
Jason converted the boxes in our basement to this graveyard. I had my doubts about how it would turn out but I was pleased with the results.I dressed-up this year as the Greek goddess Aphrodite; Jason went as Ares, the god of war. As usual, I sewed both our costumes.Here are my goddess locks. Not too shabby considering I did the “do” myself.Lee as a Chinese organ thief.This is my friend Robyn, I mean Leia, and her kiddies. Robyn won the best costume prize this year.These decorations aren’t too impressive but I like how this picture turned out.Jason and Drew A.K.A. Ares and Mark Antony. And yes, Jason does have a giant helmet.
Decorating for this party is the most time-consuming task. Our Halloween decorations fill over 20 giant Rubbermaid containers. Just locating and organizing the items we want to use is quite an ordeal. But the hardest part of decorating is trying to arrange the same decorations into something different every year. Coming up with good décor ideas for each area in our house is hard; coming up with distinct good ideas every year is nearly impossible.
This little mouse, peaking out of a teacup, is my most favorite of the decoration ideas I came up with this year. For some reason I really dig it.Jason’s parents, Keith and Sue, dressed in 50’s attire. The stitches on Sue’s nose are not part of her costume. She fell a couple of days before our party and broke her nose in two places.This is our fireplace transformed.Jenn as Alice and Strider the Mad Hatter. Jenn made these fabulous costumes.Jason’s brother Jeremy and our friend Jacob shared a sweet moment in Jeremy’s creamed crap can together. You’d think this special moment was the result of some punch spiking but that was not the case.My brother Drew came as Mark Antony and his wife, Simone, came as Cleopatra, Antony’s lover.I created this pirate’s lair to hide some basement boxes.
We love Halloween, which is why we take on this arduous chore year after year. All the work is worth it (in theory) when our friends and family show up decked-out in their costume inventions ready for some fiendish merriment. I especially enjoy watching the little kids, at least the ones that aren’t absolutely horrified by the Halloween paraphernalia, go from decoration to decoration muttering “wow” and “look at this one”. We’re glad to be part of the magic of Halloween even if it’s a lot of hard work, not magic, that makes it happen.
This is my nephew Miles with lots of loot from the pinata and treasure hunt.These are the costume contest winners…and Jacob.I did a pirate treasure hunt for the kids this year. This was the pirate booty.Here are my parents in their Halloween attire.Jason and his brother Matt goofing off.Jason did a great job on this ceiling. He hooked up all the lighting to a color box, which made the lights flicker to our Halloween music.This is yet another of the many areas we decorated for the party.
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