I ♥ Halloween

October is probably my favorite month of the year.  The crisp air, falling leaves, weather not too cold, but just cold enough for a sweater.  My birthday just also happens to be in October.  The moment October 1st hits, I find myself struck by an insatiable urge to bake and sip hot apple cider.  But above all this, I ♥ Halloween.

I love the excitement, the anticipation, the little bit of darkness/eeriness.  I do not love horror movies, but I do love the old Disney Halloween specials from the 1980s.  Mr. Boogety anyone?  The best part of Catholic school was that we got to celebrate Halloween (a big no-no in public school these days).  I am already contemplating volunteering to be a room mother just so I can help plan the class Halloween party.  Despite it being years since I got properly dressed up for Halloween, just the smell of Ponds face cream sends me back to Halloweens of long ago.

I really want to share my love of Halloween with my children.  Now that Linus is a little older, he is really into it.  We've already begun to decorate the house and gone to Barnes and Noble to buy monster books.  This year I have discovered that Target is apparently the go to place for Halloween fun. I have needed to exercise some serious self-restraint, but I did pick up a few fun goodies.  I would really love to do 31 days of Halloween, but I have already missed a few.  Last night, Linus and I went on a date after dinner to Cupcake Royale to partake of the pumpkin cupcake with cardamon cream cheese frosting. Yum!  Halloween pencils were also a big hit.

Tonight we made creepy pizzas.

gummy worms, gummy fingers, gumball eyeballs, bloody bones and skulls sweet tarts

 I actually took several cute photos of the process but I somehow managed to delete them.

Linus' creation

I made an angry face.

The pizzas have a lot of sugar.  We split one between the 3 of us.  I don't know if we will end up eating all four.  Our special Halloween time has morphed into a "carrot" for getting Linus to try food (he currently would only eat pizza, hamburgers, pbj, and macaroni and cheese if given a choice).  He has to try some of everything if he wants to do something special after dinner without Eileen in tow.

I am excited for some of our future Halloween fun---making bats, decorating pumpkins, baking, watching Great Pumpkin, whatever else I imagine.  It's going to be a good month of memories. I just hope I don't accidentally set the bar too high.