Halloween Traditions

My family has a couple traditions that we try to do every year for Halloween. The first is one that we started when my oldest sister got married (or sometime close to that). We all get together for a Halloween dinner where every dish is something spooky. Then afterwards we decorate Halloween sugar cookies with Twizzler Nibs, gummy raspberries, cinnamon candies, and other various decorations. In the past we have had some pretty fun times with this. Before moving to California, our friend, Emily, would come over with her husband and join us for cookie decorating. Last year, we decorated our table with spider webs for dinner and they ended up in all the food :) This year was just as awesome. We had meatloaf with eyeballs (boiled eggs) made by Stephanie, pumpkin shaped cheese balls made by my mom, and I made some lemonade with strawberries in it (it was supposed to be blood and guts). It was a pretty amazing dinner.

Here is the meatloaf man

You can't see it very well cuz the camera on my phone isn't very good but here is the pumpkin cheeseballs made by my mom

The next tradition in my family isn't something that we really do but more of something that happens every year. We actually haven't had it in a few years but this year we had it back again. I'm talking about dead deer in the garage! October is hunting season and every Halloween growing up we always had a deer hanging in the garage or on the swingset in the backyard. Yep, we would have to get our bikes out of the dark garage in the morning to go to school right next to a deer hanging upside down with blood dripping out of its nose. I don't know how to get more gruesome and spooky than that. It was acutally one of my favorite parts about October. I loved to sit and watch my dad skin it and slice up all the meat. A couple times he even let me help. This year both my dad and brother got deers this past weekend and so we had two hanging in the garage and so while the girls in the family made our spooky dinner, my dad and brother were skinning and butchering their prizes.

Here is my brother's just hangin' in the garage

This is my brother just skinnin' away

One of Those Roommate Nights You'll Never Forget

My roommates and I had one of those nights the other day that we all know we will never forget. You know, the ones where you try something and it fails miserably but you had so much fun in the process that by the end of the night you are all laughing really hard. So what did we attempt that failed so miserably? Making taffy. We were making it for FHE, but it took too long to boil and no one in our group wanted to stick around long enough to wait for it to be done. This ended up being a good thing because the taffy took us three hours until we got to a point where we gave up.

When making taffy, this is what is supposed to happen: You boil it until it forms a hard ball when dripped in a cold cup of water. Then you pour the taffy on a pan and let it cool in the fridge for a little while. Then you butter up your hands and take chunks of it and pull it. Basically, that means you stretch it and fold it back together, kinda like kids do with play-dough. After pulling it for a while the taffy begins to turn a lighter color until it eventually turns white and stiff.
Now this is what really happened. The taffy took way longer than normal to boil and then it was super sticky and we went through a stick and a half of butter just trying to stop it from sticking to our hands. Then we pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled some more. The taffy turned a lighter color but we could not get it to turn white. We were able to get a big ol' chunk of it to turn pretty close to white so we saved that and set it on a pan to cool. When we woke up the next morning, the taffy had flattened and spread across the whole pan. It was a complete failure and a messy, messy experience.

It was a sticky mess. Steff's hands were hopeless but
Jessa tried to help clean them off anyways.

Here's a better view of the not-so-white taffy.