It’s easy, when you spend a substantial amount of time and money on a Halloween party, to feel a little crazy. Oh wait, that’s not where I was going with this. Rewind… it’s easy to feel a little disappointed when guests hurry off after such a shindig without helping pick up any of the 150 cups they left in your kitchen or when you hear a kid complaining about the lack of a food truck at the affair. Yes, it’s easy to feel a bit underwhelmed by thanklessness after you’ve organized an overwhelming event but that’s not what I would like to write about here. Instead, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the elixirs to our insanity.

We had more assistance with our party this time than ever before. Jacob, Lee, Sue, and Keith all came over one night for a party-decorating party. We got a whole room done that evening; it was miraculous. The creative juices were so abundant we were all a little sticky in the end. My brother-in-law also joined us, along with some of our nieces and nephews, on a few separate occasions and we had a great time putting up spider webs and lights. During the event, Jenny supervised the carnival games. For take down, Fran, Cam, Rowley, Lee, Sue, and Keith all offered their assistance one evening. With their help, we had Halloween packed away by Thanksgiving, or shortly thereafter. Thank you all! Not only was your help very valuable, it was a much-appreciated gesture of gratitude.

As for the party itself, here are a few of this year’s random stats:

1. We had nearly 90 attendees, a new record I believe. But, for the record, we were not trying to break any records. Hopefully that upward trend stabilizes, otherwise we are going to have to institute an admittance process.

2. We went through 30 liters of soda, in addition to an incalculable amount of water.

3. Traditionally, about 30% of our attendees are kids. This year, children accounted for half of the partyers.

4. We assembled six dozen party favors and gave out every single one of them. That was a first.

5. We had a photographer taking old-time hand-developed pictures on black aluminum using a wet-plate collodion method, a process invented in 1851. The procedure was as interesting as the results.

6. We had 18 flavors of gourmet cotton candy spun in our backyard. (No bratty kid, not a food truck this time.)

7. A girl got hit in the face while the piñata was being hammered down. I knew that was going to happen sooner or later. For some reason, kids become animals over a few Twizzlers when a piñata is involved.

8. After the gathering, Jason and I were up until 4:30 in the morning cleaning crumbs and food globs off our floors. Thanks Cam for coming back to help with the first rounds of sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and furniture replacement at 12:30 AM!

And that is how we survived our Halloween party this year, with a lot of gratitude, and a little frustration, in our hearts. To all our helpers, thank you for being enablers of our madness! We can’t tell you how much your aid meant. You are awesome!

This October we held our annual Halloween bash once more. We again covered our house in potion books and cobwebs. And, as usual, we spent months creating costumes, collecting prizes and preparing games. And yes, our brains were both donated by Abby Normal. (How did you know?)

As I have mentioned at every possible opportunity, transforming our house into a festive haunt takes a tremendous amount of work. However, despite the ominous layers of spectral decay prolific at our party, some attendees can’t comprehending how the bedecking could take more than a day or two. If you doubt the validity of our toils, help us decorate for a few hours. The tiny area you’ll complete with an evening’s work will have you convinced. (Yes, I am trying to trick you into helping us decorate.)

Since I’m already whining, allow me to continue with a dissection of the lengthy process involved in transforming just one small space from tedious to terrifying. Please refer to the picture of the staircase above and the steps to its creation below:

1. Get a splendidly morbid idea, preferably one you haven’t used in the 15+ years you’ve been spooking. (This can be pretty tough when your creative juice have already been digested a few times. Isn’t there some rule about how many times you can drink your pee?)
2. Disassemble Jason’s bad idea. (Sorry Jason, your concept for the staircase didn’t look very good.)
3. Cover one wall in black gossamer sheets for the benefit of some soon-to be-added pallid bits.
4. Cover those sheets strategically with black creepy cloth.
5. Add squirming mummy hands, AKA pallid bits.
6. Add stringy white cloth to make it appear like the mummy hands have been losing their stuff n’ stuff.
7. Add some ragged grey cloth like your grandma would add doilies.
8. Add a string of bat lights.
9. Hang dismembered hands on opposite wall.
10. Give those hands some holey cloth and eyeballs to hold onto.
11. Wrap the whole area in a thick coating of cobwebs.
12. Add a few final touches like flaming candlesticks and rabid rats.
13. Power up everything with some imaginative extension cord placement and a whole lot of batteries.

That little zone took no less than several hours and over 100 pushpins to create. But at least we only had another twenty areas or so to go afterward…

Although a party wouldn’t be fitting for Halloween without some dark ambiance, you’ve got to follow through after you set the mood. Photos by professionals, carnival games, a piñata, crafts, bingo, treats, a costume contests… we made sure our party wasn’t all dressed up with nowhere to go.

We had roughly 70 or so guests show up, a pretty normal turnout. It was a wicked, insane, sugary, chaotic, colorful, noisy, crowded, sticky, amusing, competitive, exhausting night. In other words, it was a typical Sabin party.

Thanks everyone that joined us in celebrating the most horrible (and best) holiday. No party would be a success without fun-loving people. And a big thank you to the tremendous kin and friends that helped us put up, clean up, take down or run games. We had more helpers this year than we ever have. Due to that atypical assistance, our decorations are almost all contained at this point. That is unprecedented progress given we are often still packing away Halloween when it’s time to put up Christmas. Thank you!