I Turned 29, Part 2: The Halloween Birthday Party

Halloween has come and gone, regardless of how long I’ve dragged it out.  You can celebrate it as much as you want in October, but come November 1 the spiderwebs and decorations look as out of place as skis in summer.

I had my Halloween birthday party Saturday night.  There were so many highlights but I will try to sum them up here.  Nikki, who I’ve been friends with since first grade, drove down from Roanoke for the weekend.  Katy surprised me by showing up on my doorstep Saturday morning.  I was so happy that two of my best friends were there that I almost forgot there were other people coming to the party later that night.

We spent the day baking things like witches toes, mummy hotdogs, cupcakes, and eyeballs.  Nikki found a way to use every ingredient that was left over, so after making the gelatin bloody hand she decided that the best use for the excess would be to make jello shots.  Naturally.  The lesson to be learned there is that a) the more things change, the more they stay the same, and b) jello shots make everything much more fun!

The decorations looked stunning, and I spent less than $30 on them!  Everyone kept commenting on all of the details, which I took as a huge compliment.  I wanted a scary first impression when guests walked up to the door, I wanted the inside of the house to be immersed in Halloween, and I wanted continuity.  Even when people went to the bathroom they still found things like a witches broom in the corner, spider webs over the mirror, and (fake) broken, bloody glass shards around the sink.

Other highlights that evening were Katy doing the choreographed version of The Monster Mash and Nikki’s attention to detail with her zombie costume (tip- she used dried Elmer’s glue for her fake skin and it looked perfect!).  My friends Liz and Andrew showed up as characters from The Great Gatsby – which was adorable.  We also had witches and warlocks, Jason, and one person dressed as Al Borlin.  There were others who came, but they weren’t in costume so they sat on the sidelines and watched while we took pictures and played our parts by staying in character.  Well, everyone but Liz who became possessed by the Halloween slasher spirit and decided that having a bloody knife was a much more fun prop than a purse.

Determined to dress up on October 31, it was off to work I went in my Holly Golightly costume.  I thought it was pretty perfect because if I had to, I could remove some accessories and look like a normal worker bee.  Well, it backfired because no one else in my office was dressed in costume, some forgot it was Halloween, more than one commented that I was very dressed up for work, and most did not know who Holly Golightly was so I had a lot of mistaken identity.  By the end of the day when people asked if I was in costume, I resigned to telling people (with long black gloves and pearl necklace on) that this was my Monday look, and I always dress like this on Mondays.

Last night was the first Halloween that I stayed home and passed out candy.  Judging by my friends’ Facebook and Twitter feeds, I’d say they also did the unthinkable and stayed home.  Or, as some might say, we grew up and acted our age.  Whatever that means.  It would have been much more fun and exciting had there been more trick or treaters than the two kids that came at 9:15, but maybe the rain had something to do with it.  Or maybe parents wouldn’t let their kids come to our door because it looked like a murder scene.

All in all, my favorite holiday went off without a hitch, even with a few missteps here and there.  Now I have to transform the scary into harvesty and brace myself for the holidays.

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