Happy Halloween

I love Halloween. I have many fond memories of putting on extra layers of clothing underneath my princess dress (most often my costume of choice) and a coat, scarf, gloves and hat over top my costume to brave the snowy outdoors in order to gather a bag full of candy. We each grabbed our cloth pumpkin bag, handmade by our Aunt Linda each with a different shaped pumpkin face so we could tell them apart (I still have that bag!), and out the door we went. We usually started our trick-o-treating early by driving the 20 miles or so to my maternal grandparents house. My siblings and I were always so excited to visit them, not only to show off our costumes but because they always gave us full-size candy bars and a can of pop. We then drove back to Chester, where we visited every house on our preplanned route, making sure to stop at our great-grandparents house who gave out homemade popcorn balls. As soon as we got home, the coats came off and we would all sit in a circle in our living room to look over our spoils. There was also many a bargain struck as we bartered with our candy, trying to get rid of the waxy pumpkins, corn candy and butterscotch hard candies in exchange for a snickers, pack of skittles or starburst. Good times, good times. The worst part of the night was when my mom washed the makeup off my face...I always seemed to end up with burning eyes full of soap! 

We've already had our Halloween festivities for the year. Last Saturday night was our ward's Halloween party. This is THE event of the year for our ward. People get super excited for it and some go all out with their costumes. Brian and I didn't really start thinking about our costumes until the week before. We ended up dressing as Clark Kent and Lois Lane, both because we are Superman fans and we had most of the accessories already. 

We printed off a Superman "S" and taped it to Brian's shirt, and bought a cheap pair of nerd glasses. I attempted to do my hair in a 50's-comic-book/Margo Kidder-Lois-Lane-style. The barrel curls along the bottom of my hair looked great until we went outside and the wind about blew the hair off my head. But what's Halloween without some adverse weather to mess up your costume? We topped off the look with some press passes (designed by my talented husband), a hat for Brian and a pencil behind my ear. Simple, but I think it turned out great and we had fun.

We made a pot of Grandma Westover's Chili to contribute to the chili cook-off/potluck and a pan of cornbread. Our house smelled amazing!

The subway was running slow so we decided to walk the 12 or so blocks to our church. Brian carried the steaming pot of chili the whole way without dropping it. Ahhh, the adventures of living in New York!

Our chili didn't win, but we were told more than once that it almost made it to the top three. We had a lot of fun. We have such an awesome ward and are grateful for the friends we've made here in New York.

We don't get any trick-or-treaters at our apartment. We have a couple families with children that live in our building but they never stop by. While I was out running errands today I saw lots of little kids in their costumes out with their parents. They go trick-or-treating to the stores during the day. I think its kind of sad that they don't go from house to house and visit everyone in their neighborhood like we did, but New York is a big place and you don't always know your neighbors. At least we have a trunk-or-treat at the church for the kids in our ward. I love the support system that we have as members of the LDS Church! 

Tonight we're going to have a simple dinner of leftovers and then watch some Halloween-type shows. We saved the most recent episode of "The Walking Dead" (so gory but addicting) to watch tonight which we will follow up with "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown." Oh, and of course I bought some candy for us to enjoy...