Happy Halloween!

Whew, another Halloween gone and we've all survived! I spent the day before Halloween prepping for all the festivities! I live in an apartment complex (boo) so we never get trick or treaters...but my sister and her husband live in a house up in a great neighborhood so we went there for the fun!
In order to throw a proper trick-or-treat party, you have to make sufficiently nasty (but still yummy) treats!
I made a jello brain mold using raspberry jello and heavy cream which turned out to be both disgusting and rich, but very yummy. I mixed up two boxes of raspberry jello and added in 2 envelopes of Knox unflavored gelatin to help give it some firmness for the mold. Before I added the cream in, I took the raspberry jello and "painted" it into the brain mold folds to look like veins, etc. I then mixed in the cream to the remainder of the jello which gave it a pink fleshy color. All in all, looked pretty good!

After that it was on to the really disgusting stuff. I was flipping through a magazine a few weeks ago and saw a really cool technique where they draped a plastic skull with strips of prosciutto ham to look like a zombie or mummy. It was disgusting and I knew it would be PERFECT! I went to the local pop up Halloween store and picked up a hard plastic skull for about $10. I scrubbed it, disinfected it and ran it through the dishwasher before wrapping it in the strips of meat. SOOOOO GROSS BUT SOOOO PERFECT!
We served it with Wheat Thins, grapes, cantaloupe cubes and asparagus spears. It was very tasty, and yet, not many people ate it... (wonder why???) Tons of compliments though!
The best part was opening my fridge and seeing this monstrosity staring back at me. I felt very serial killerish and spent the entire day praying that there would be no reason for anyone but me to open my fridge...I'm pretty sure if anybody else had, they would have called the cops and I would have spent the day in jail.

I also carved out a tiny sugar pumpkin and stuffed it with onion dip for our chip and dips. Again, looked great but not a lot of munchers. Think I'm doing too good a job on making these look nasty! I call this one "punkin' chunkin'." I took it home and washed it out, filled it with squirrel feed and put it on the back porch. Now my squirrel spends the afternoon eating out of the pumpkin, giving him a decidedly "zombie" styled look. Ha!








Here are just a few fun photos from the night. Enjoy!

Our totally awesome gross and completely yummy tablescape including homemade pumpkin pie, gingerbread haunted houses and graveyard, and of course, the proscuitto skull!










My paper mache skull from a few years ago flickers spooky with the addition of some battery powered fake candles.























Luci waiting in costume for trick-or-treaters. She got a little upset when she realized we were giving the candy away...but after some Skittles, she was okay.



























Our cardboard "Graveyard," Grief Gulch.














Mr. Pippers in his costume. Don't worry, he's VERY secure with his masculinity.