IT'S HALLOWEEN'S FAULT - HONEST

Oh my word, I know we've been a bit busy, but how long?

What can I say?  Well there is only one thing I can say...HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEEN!

Yep, Halloween has just been, taken over our house and disappeared in a flurry of red fabric, skeleton scene setters and cake and biscuits.

Halloween is the one festival that we celebrate big time in our house.  I do tend to go slightly over the top and I have enough decorations to open a small shop.  Every year I say I won't buy anymore and every year I do.  We now have 6 boxes of Halloween decs and miscellania compared with only 2 boxes of Christmas.  Not that we don't love Christmas too, but Halloween is where we go over the top and indulge in spooky silliness.  

Even though Callum hates change and isn't overly keen on parties, he's grown up in a house where Halloween has always featured big.  His sister is 11 years older than him and I've been doing parties for her since she was about 6, so they have always been part of his life.  He actually really enjoys them and over recent years has been having quite a bit of input as to decoration ideas, helping with the baking and sorting out the games.

We try to have a themed party, sometimes it's very loosely themed and other times it's a bit more specific.  Last year was a MacBeth theme, so we did try and follow the story as closely as we could.  This year was Zombies and the Land of the Dead.  We started the party by 'dying' eating 'poisoned' grapes in a musical statues type game, then passed our coffin and paid the ferryman his dues to get to the land of the dead.

The Ferryman

Paying the Ferryman with chocolate eyeballs and coins

Next they had to find their skeletons and search for their organs in pots of goo.

Goo of wallpaper paste and food colouring and 'organs' courtesy of Wilkinsons

Then a couple of games just for fun as they were now fully fledged zombies; passing the eyeball balloon and, of course, bobbing for apples.

The later has become a firm favourite and all the kids are getting really competitive.  There is a special competition between Callum and his sister.  She only just beat him this year.  It's getting close!

Callum 'bobbing'

The eyeball balloon pass

And did we eat?  Of course we did.

'Eyeball' biscuits

Cheese 'snails'

Coconut 'mice'

Shortbread 'fingers'

'Mummy' buffet

Unveiling the 'mummy'

So that was Halloween.  Since then we've been deconstucting 'the lab' and 'the land of the dead'; sorting out the dining room back to a usable classroom; going to a local firework display and.... being ill.  Yep, both have been a bit rough since Sunday 4th November.  Just colds, so just snotty and sleepy and snuggly.  So not really much done at all on school front.  However, Callum did design his Xmas card that we are going to have made up into proper cards through a local home ed group and we made apple and cinnamon cake and banana bread today.  So not a complete loss, haha.

Anyway, cya.  Hopefully normal service will now resume.

Fireworks at The Great Lines