Happy Halloween!

So I may be a little slow in posting this, I mean it's only January, I'm just barely 9 weeks late, sheesh! :)

DH and I threw a fun little Halloween party this year. A couple of years ago when we were living in Jacksonville we had a Halloween dinner with some friends who had a tradition of having people over and eating dinner on their front porch while watching the trick or treaters. They started the tradition in San Diego, we did it with them in Jacksonville and we carried it to Hawaii. Now, to be fair, the outside dinner concept only works in warm weather places, but I love it. How many times have you been at a Halloween party and never seen a trick or treater?! This way you can see them all, and count how many Elsa and Anna costumes you get (we should have counted!!)

The weather was mostly with us for Halloween, it didn't rain while we had guests over, but a couple of hours before there were torrential downpours. Luckily our carport was undercover and large enough to prevent the table from getting wet. 

So we moved our dining room table out under the carport and also made an impromptu table with 2 sawhorses and some plywood because we had more people than our table will allow. We covered them with orange disposable table cloths, they were $0.97 at Walmart in Hawaii. We also had a black table cloth that we folded in half as a runner of sorts. Since it the table was outside and we had wind to consider (we live on the windward side), we needed to tape the tablecloths in place.

Above the table you can see some floating candles. We made them out of LED tea lights, computer paper and fishing line. You can use a whole sheet of paper to make the candles, but really you can get up to 4 out of a single sheet. Tie the fishing line around the base of the flame, tie the other end in a loop and hang it from a thumb tack. 

On the wall you can see some garbage bag spiderwebs I made using a tutorial I found on Pinterest. 

Finally, since it is Hawaii, we carved pineapple.

This was surprisingly easy to do. We found some pineapples which stood up on their own, cut off the top of the pineapple and cored it as normal. We have this awesome tool that if you think you will be having a lot of pineapple is a must to won. Then we just took a knife and carved it. The shell is a little harder than a pumpkin so you are more limited in the shapes you can get, but a simple face is easy enough to do. 

  

You can see how it looks at dusk with the hanging candles and the pumpkins lit.

 Finally, we served some 'spooky' spaghetti. It is spaghetti cooked in water with black icing color. Again, we found it at Walmart, but most craft stores that have a cake decorating section should have icing color. I think it looks like snakes on the plate. Seeing how easy it was to make I was suddenly struck with inspiration, Green noodles for St. Patrick's day! Red and blue noodles with plain (white) noodles for Independence day! Red and green noodles for Christmas! And then I realized that we just don't need to eat that much pasta. :) But I am going to remember how easy it is if the need arises. 

  

And we dressed up as Harley Quinn and The Joker.

Husband BOUGHT A PURPLE SUIT to be Joker. We have never gone big for Halloween, so buying an entire suit seemed a little overboard to me. So he got the suit and yellow vest/tie online and we bought a neon green shirt from Goodwill. He is required to wear that suit for the next several Halloweens, so he can either be the Joker, or the guy from the Mask, or maybe a Dia de los Muertos guy.

I went as Harley Quinn who apparently is Joker's girlfriend of sorts. I had never heard of her until this Halloween season, but fortunately she was very popular as a Halloween character. Since hubby spent so much on his costume I didn't want to spend a lot on mine. So I didn't really buy and premade costume of hers but looked to them for inspiration. I already had the black petticoat so I bought a black bra, red tank top, Harley Quinn official choker, red/black tights, the gloves and mask.