A spook-tastic Halloween!

Halloween is one of my very favorite holidays. I don't know why. I love coming up with a costume idea and I start planning it months ahead. I think that carving pumpkins is one of the most fun things you can do, and, of course, I love candy.

This Halloween was no exception! On Monday we carved our pumpkins. I made an owl and Jordan stayed up until one carving Jack from Nightmare before Christmas on to his. It was really hard to get a picture but here's the best one of mine (I didn't get a picture of his because I was asleep when he finished and I forgot).

Well, you can kind of tell it's an owl, anyway.

On Thursday, Jordan and I went to the ward Halloween party. I had signed up to bring dessert, so I made some of my cupcakes. I used a pumpkin spice recipe that was delicious--I urge you all to try it!

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

1 box of French Vanilla or yellow cake mix
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
3/4 cup buttermilk (I used regular milk and they tasted great!)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs

Then you just bake as directed on the mix box. They were really yummy!

Anyway, I decorated them like pumpkins. They didn't turn out as cute as I'd hoped, but they were okay.

For the party, we dressed up like The Phantom of the Opera and Christine. Everyone at the party was shocked that I actually wore my wedding dress. I'd forgotten how huge that skirt was with the slip under it. Wow. And I'm sure it still wasn't as huge as Christine's from the movie!

We had fun but we didn't win any costume prizes. People in our ward really got into Halloween! It was great.

On the actual day of Halloween we went to the corn maze at Hee Haw Farms with Chip and Elysia. I decided to dress up like a cowgirl because Jordan told me he wasn't going to dress up that day. It was so fun! There were lots of things to do there. We went into the petting zoo and saw the prettiest ducks.

And Elysia had dressed up as "Swine Flu" (she had a pig nose), so she posed with her piglet friends.

And I made friends with a cute donkey.

We met the world's largest pig, Leroy, who weighs around 1200 pounds.

And then we fed some cute goats!

But not this goat.

Then my camera ran out of batteries. Sad. But we also shot off a corn cannon, went through the corn maze, played in the hay, lassoed some (fake) cows, and slide down a big slide. An excellent afternoon!

That evening, we went over to Jamie and Emily's to go Trick or Treating with Molly. She wanted to eat her candy right when she got it--it was pretty funny. She was dressed as a really fluffy white cat. She was so cute! I have pictures but I left my camera at their house so I'll post them later. Anyway, she didn't Trick or Treat for very long...I think she got like ten pieces of candy, but she didn't really mind. Then we all came home and had a GREAT dinner, thanks to Emily, and watched an episode of House. Not really scary, but fun nontheless.

I would call Halloween this year a great success! Now I just have to start planning our costumes for next year...