My Musings: Halloween 2020

We celebrated Halloween twice this year! Once with the entire family over zoom a few days before halloween and then again on the actual holiday.

Most of us dressed up for the family zoom. Karin dressed up as Snow White and Thomas and James were cute little dinosaurs. Mom and V were black kitties, Monty was a bat, Dad was a pirate king, Beth dressed in 20s attire and I was the Snow Queen.

The Griffins looked amazing, half their family dressed up as characters from Greek Mythology. Jenny was Athena, Nora was Madusa, Mike was Poseidon and Dorie was Cerberus. Evie made a costume that looked just like her character on Animal Crossing, she did such a great job! Sam dressed as Shy Guy from Super Mario.

A few close ups of my Snow Queen costume.

I was excited for the opportunity to wear my silver glitter shoes!

We played Halloween bingo over zoom. I had found a version online that had enough unique cards for our entire family, which was pretty hard to do since our family is so big. I had emailed different cards to the Burtons and Griffins and we had a great time playing!

Each family got their own prizes for whenever anyone got bingo. These were the prizes I got for the Madisons, Mom, Dad and Me. I tried to pick out one thing that everyone would love, plus extras that everyone would like.

After our fun zoom party, those of us that were at Mom and Dad's enjoyed a fun and delicious Utah Taste Off kit. This week was fall flavored cookies. The flavors included were:

Apple Pie

Pumpkin with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

Loaded Caramel Apple

Reese's Explosion

Almond Sugar Cookies

Maple Buttercream

A couple of days after our family Halloween party, I had a fun trick-or-treat prep night. There has been a big debate about what to do about trick or treating this year because of Covid. A lot of people didn't think it was a problem and answered the door with a big bowl of candy like normal. Some people didn't participate at all in order to remain safe. And others got creative on how to still participate but still be safe. I came up with the idea of making little grab bags to put on my porch, so the kids would still have a fun halloween experience, but I didn't put myself at risk of exposure.

So one night, I watched Hocus Pocus and put together all my candy bags, it was super fun!

I made myself a put of pumpkin spice tea and enjoyed it the entire night, along with some yummy treats that I had gotten for myself and weren't going into the trick or treat bags.

I even made sure to dress for the occasion, I made a whole night of it.

The view out my windows that night was breathtaking.

I was so excited to put out all my candy bags on halloween night, they looked so cute!

I watched my Ring camera footage all night long, it was so much fun to see the kids (and even the parents!) get excited over my cute candy bags. It was so rewarding to have my idea pay off in such a successful way! My only regret with this idea was that I didn't make more bags, I had no idea how many kids to expect and I didn't want to have a ton of extra candy, so I didn't make that many and I ran out pretty early on in the night.

I thought this was kind of funny, a couple dressed up as Carol Baskin and the Tiger King (he is behind the tree)

Jenny and Mike ended up trying out my idea as well, they did it right and made tons of bags so they could replenish their table throughout the night. Their set up looked so good!

Mom and Dad also liked the idea of being able to participate in Halloween but stay safe from Covid. So Beth and I helped them make their candy bags and set them out.

After all the candy had been set out for the trick-or-treaters, we could begin our party festivities! Another nice aspect of this way of trick-or-treating is that you can actually have activities planned and not have to leave to answer the door every couple of minutes.

We began with a very fun and festive Utah Taste Off, this week was donuts! The flavors this week were:

Boo-Berry Cake Donut

Churro White Cake Donut

Pumpkin Spice With Cream Cheese Frosting

Bat Raised Donut with Chocolate Frosting

Raised Donut with Oreo Crumble and Gummy Worms

Vampire Raised Spudnut with Sweet icing

We pretty much loved them all, they were so good.

Next up was a fun craft that Beth had brought for us. She wanted to document this weird time but also have fun, so we decorated face masks!

They all turned out so fun! From top to bottom we have mine, Mom's, Vienne's, and Beth's. Beth made hers to look like a skeleton nose and smile.

We ended the night by letting the kids go trick-or-treating downstairs in the bedroom area at mom and dads house. This is the perfect place because there are a lot of doors for them to knock at.