A white Halloween: Second Sequence

Despite inches of slush in the streets and cold, wet snow and rain falling from the sky, we actually had a pretty decent turnout at the Halloween party last night. Naturally, a few people bailed (and I didn't blame them at all--it was ridiculously miserable outside), but we had plenty of friends to eat all the food I prepared as well as go through many a bottle of wine and pitcher of Ginger Alice punch. We decorated the apartment with fairly minimalist decorations: cobwebs in various colors, jack-o-lanterns with fangs, a well-placed REDRUM facing the bathroom mirror. The real focus of party funds and energy, as with any party I plan, went toward the food. We served the following:

Monster brains! Actually, guacamole served in a hollowed out cauliflower. Always a good addition to any party.

This is just regular gouda, but I really like this new mouse trap cheese board and slicer I found in San Francisco. Also, not pictured here is the delicious lavender honey goat cheese a friend brought later.

The cupcake graveyard was one of the least popular items in terms of actual consumption because full sized cupcakes are a lot to commit to when compared to mostly bite sized finger foods. People were willing to steal the milano tombstones though.

I'd seen this recipe absolutely everywhere online lately, so I had to make them. They're almond shortbread cookies with almond fingernails (and a little strawberry jam for just the right touch of gore)

Here's the whole spread including a couple of things I didn't get good individual pictures of. Next to the cupcake graveyard is the bowl of weasel brains (bacon wrapped dates stuffed with almonds) and adjacent to that are the mummy dogs (I really wish I had a good picture of these, but they looked similar to this, except that I cut the hot dogs in half for more of a baby mummy effect).

I also wanted to post a few pictures of the party people who consumed these edibles:

We'd talked of having a costume contest and even bought a prize, but then in the heat of the action completely forgot to award it. The next morning we awarded it to the person who had crashed on our couch because he was the only guest still in attendance. He's pictured at right and was "The Economy." However, the three of us all agreed that the man to his left had the best costume of the night as some sort of masquerading Mozart. Hopefully, he won't be too upset that he did not receive his well deserved award, because the prize was actually just a yellow ribbon that said "I'm very special!" If only he read my blog, he could receive his proper accolades.

More friends: Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood, creepy "I like Santa" kid from A Christmas Story, egg, tiger, and bacon.

Our friends Rocky and Bullwinkle. Bullwinkle did a decent impression of himself. It's a hard voice to master.

You can't really see me that well, but I was the one legged table lamp from A Christmas Story. I stood sideways in all picture so it would appear as if I only had one leg. However, in this picture, you can't really see my leg, so the illusion was for nothing.

Hope you all had happy Saturday-before-Halloween nights! And hopefully better weather than we had here in Astoria. Luckily, it's now sunny and beautiful (if a touch chilly) today and tomorrow. It is especially important that the weather be decent on Halloween itself because I'll be dancing in the Village Halloween parade again this year. Those of you longtime readers may remember I danced "Beat It" in the parade last year, but this year have upgraded to the more Halloween-themed "Thriller" group. I will continue my marathon of posts by updating on Tuesday on what is hopefully a successful parade Monday night. Which means I need to figure how to zombify myself sometime today.