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