Halloween 2016

You all already know that I was attempting to do a scarecrow theme this year, but for some reason, the stores don't sell a whole lot in the way of scarecrows, so I ended up leaning towards crows.  You can't really have a scarecrow without crows anyway, right?  After all, without crows, scarecrows may have never even been invented.

So this is what I ended up doing with my skeleton. PW never wants to dress up to be the "host" like Steph always used to do, so luckily I have a life-size skeleton to recruit for the job. I found the mask at Target and make him wear it, and sewed some patches on a pair of jeans that PW didn't want anymore, and put one of Chuck's old shirts on him.  And of course I had to have a hay bale for him to sit on.  I wish I had some old dried out corn stalks from someone's garden, but that's hard to find up here.

Notice the doll hanging by the neck in the window?

I found this doll at Value Village.  It talks and says creepy things when you move it around.  It is VERY sensitive - the slightest vibration will make it go off.  When I was carrying it around in the store, it wouldn't shut up because even just walking around with it vibrated it enough to say something (and it also plays creepy music).  When I was checking out, the cashier lady said "I was wondering where that noise was coming from......"  Anyhoo, I thought it deserved it to be "strung up", if you know what I mean.  That way, it would take an earthquake to set it off.

Ideally, it would be fun if I could always dress up according to my theme, as the restaurant host, but that never works very well.  I did that one year as a witch, and it was almost dangerous doing all the cooking in a witch costume - all that loose clothing getting caught on everything.

The last thing I wanna do is go up in flames as a grand finale.

Here is what my "restaurant", The Crow's Nest, looked like:

Every year it looks pretty much the same except for minor details according to my theme.

I always like the feel of the atmosphere when I walk in there.

Some of you that received my menu might be wondering what the food was.

I forgot to take pictures of the appetizers, but that was just some odds and ends of light finger snacks, and a small bowl of corn chowder, which you have already seen in one my previous posts.

Here is the Bootzaman:

VOGELSCHEUCHE MIT KARTOFFELKLOSSE

I found out that the German immigrants called a scarecrow a "bootzamon" (which later turned into "bogeyman"), so I wanted to do some kind of German dish.  Sauerkraut kinda looks like hay, so I decided to use that, and then made a face with the sausage pieces.  For the eyeballs, I shoved capers into small mozzarella balls and then put those into pieces of sausage.  The German word for scarecrow is "vogelscheuche" and the German word for potato dumplings is "kartoffelklosse".

So...."Vogelscheuche mit Kartoffelklosse" translates as "Scarecrow with Potato Dumplings"

served mit maiskolben on the side (corn on the cob).

I knew my kids wouldn't eat the Bootzamon, so I made them "Eat Crow" instead.

That one is pretty obvious.  It's just chicken wings.  The "parking lot garbage" was pieces of grilled cheese sandwich. 

For one of the desserts, I made "Scarecrow Brains" with malignant brain tumor.

It is rhubarb crisp with vanilla ice cream.

I made the vanilla ice cream myself because I can't have dairy.

I make my ice cream out of coconut milk.

The sauce is rhubarb-raspberry sauce that is Alaskan made.  

Very yummy.

Again, I knew the kids wouldn't eat that, so for the other dessert, I made "Compost Rot".

It is hot fudge sundae cake with store-bought chocolate ice cream.  I haven't had store-bought ice cream in a long time, and now when I see it, it's disgusting to me.  Even scooping it out of the box, it feels all "wrong", like it feels spongy.  That can't be real food. But that's just me.

Here is some extra "chocolate sauce" to drizzle on your synthetic ice cream if you want some:

I don't know if you can read all of that, but you get the idea.

So that was pretty much our dinner.  We didn't invite anyone over this year, so it was just us this time.  

Unless you count Bossy:

After it was all over, I had the whole weekend to start packing some stuff away, and moving some of my decorations outside on the porch to greet the trick-or-treaters.

So that's about it.  

Now, for the huge task of putting everything away.......

.......until next year.......