Its Halloween Week!! If you missed how much I love this holiday… check it out here, here and here. We hosted our annual Halloween party this last weekend and I thought I’d show you guys some of our decor! The center of any party is food, so I typically set up one table with food and then have a few places that I set food around the house (like candy corn in bowls near the couches). This year I was inspired by black and white Halloween decor, so I decided to stick with that as a theme.

It mostly started with finding the black and white fabric at Joann’s for 60% off and went from there.  I added the burlap to break up the black and white a bit, and then just added all the black and white Halloween related things I could find!

Some quick cutting of Chalkboard Vinyl and I had labels for my glass jars, a few glittery pumpkins, spiders and a spray painted skull rounded out some of the decor.

I saw both of these cupcakes flying around the blog-o-sphere and thought they would be a great addition to the tablescape.  They were super easy to make and look so cute!

I tried to stick with a mostly black and white theme for food as well.  The spread was white cheddar popcorn, chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, chips and salsa (not white, but a crowdpleaser non-the-less), wheat thins and a cream cheese ball, a veggie tray, and some cookies to finish it off.  These are my favorite sugar cookies (recipe here).  They are so versatile, I like making them for a lot of parties… not to mention they are DELICIOUS. I’m still mastering my royal icing skills.

For drinks we had lemonade and sangria (and beer and sodas):

And for fun we added a spot for people to take their own ‘photo booth pictures’… just a little fabric on the wall along with some super cute vintage halloween decor that my grandmother had in her basement… How cute are those cats?!

My husband and I dressed up as a Tootsie Roll Pop… our last name is Popst so we added a fun twist on the word for his costume… and I was the owl (remember the how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop commercial??) and made my costume out of felt.  I’ll add a tutorial later this week for my costume!

I hope you guys all have a great week and enjoy your own Halloween celebrations!

So I’ve shown you here and here how I’ve done Halloween for the last couple of years, but my true love for Halloween really goes back to my childhood. My family does holiday’s up right, and Halloween is no exception.  My mother was a master at costumes and we always had fun home-made costumes (I didn’t even really know stores SOLD costumes until much later in life).  So I thought it would be fun (and torture for my brothers) to take you on a little stroll down memory lane to see some of my favorite Halloween memories of old.  In somewhat of a chronological order:

When you have twins there is only so long that you have to dress them in matching/coordinating outfits until they revolt.  That revolt happened only a few years after this happened:

For those of you who are too young or don’t recognize us (despite our AWESOME yarn wigs) we are Raggedy Ann and Andy.  This wasn’t the only year we utilized these costumes, but I just love the dumbfounded look on both of our faces in this picture.

The next stop on our little trip down memory lane features characters from the ever-present childhood game Cowboys and Indians (and the Karate Kid?).  My older brother is on the right in a costume my mom made out of fake leather.  I’m in an adorable little cowgirl outfit that belonged to family friends (and that family friend had a daughter who sported the same costume last year for Halloween. Thank goodness for recycling… that costume is too good to be worn only once!).  The Karate Kid on the left was an old neighbor of ours who went out haunting with us that year.

Next up features myself playing the role of princess (complete with adorable little red cheeks), my older brother as the fierce looking pirate and my twin brother being super intimidating as the smiling Karate Kid.

For the next year I continue my very girly phase as a fairy princess (apparently I desperately wanted to be some kind of princess).  My twin brother is a Ninja Turtle (Leonardo maybe?) and you gotta love his commitment to the role.  My older brother rounds out the trio as a mummy.

The last two photos are from the same year, but both are such cute pictures I couldn’t pass it up.  My twin brother is recycling the Indian costume from a few years earlier and I’m in an ADORABLE cat costume that my mother made.  I loved that thing… even if it is never cold enough in Texas on Halloween to be sporting such a thick costume, I didn’t care… I loved it.

I’m including the next picture from the same year because it has my favorite Halloween costume that has ever been in my family.  Our foreign exchange student Mizuho drew the King of Spades onto a sheet of poster board for my older brother to wear as a sandwich board for Halloween. I think that costume is A-MAZING.

I hope you are all starting to make preparations for Halloween!! Happy Haunting!