One of my Favorite Things? Halloween! – by Pam Crooks

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When I saw that my day for Favorite Things fell on Halloween, I instantly knew what to write about.

A no-brainer, right?

Except Halloween wasn’t always as much fun for me as it is now.  Oh, I did the mom-thing and made all my girls’ costumes.  Some of them were very creative.  The planning and prep was fun through the eyes of my daughters, and I truly miss that part of Halloween even now.

But of course, the time came when they quit dressing up.  They grew up, married, and had kids of their own to make costumes for.  Halloween fell a little flat for me in those years, and the fact that we live in a quiet neighborhood comprised of empty-nesters, too, didn’t help.  If we get 15 trick-or-treaters, it’s a big night.

So the more grandkids I had, the more I began to live vicariously through their celebrating.  Having a family Halloween celebration before the 31st allowed me to see them in costume without intruding on their trick-or-treating.  And a celebration couldn’t happen without a meal.  Since all four of my daughters are great cooks, we all got into the spirit of fun spookiness.

I can’t share all of the pictures I’ve taken over the years, but here are a few of my favorites.

Monster burgers – my favorite Halloween entree ever.

Puking Pumpkin

Jalapeno Mummies

Pumpkin Relish Tray

Hard-boiled Egg Eyes

Bloody Guts

(Don’t worry – it’s only cinnamon rolls with red frosting.   Ha!)

New this year – my Skeleton-in-a-Casket Charcuterie Board!

This was a fun and easy treat – oatmeal cookies with Reese’s Peanut Butter cups made into spiders.

 

Graveyard Poke Cake

We cut into this dessert before I could snap a picture, but my daughter made it just like this.  So cute!

And last but not least, my husband as a Playfully Scary Clown!

How do you celebrate Halloween?

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Pam has written 30 romances, most of them historical westerns, but she's proud of her contemporary sweet romances featuring the Blackstone Ranch series published by Tule Publishing, too! Stay up on the latest at www.pamcrooks.com

39 thoughts on “One of my Favorite Things? Halloween! – by Pam Crooks”

  2. I get about 10-15 trick or treaters at our door, some of them being the grandkids. We hand out candy and I get a chance to read a book in between. Some years, our church puts together a chili cook off and we have a giant trunk or treat in the church parking lot. When my kids were still living at home, we would do fun things for dinner before they went out and got all that candy, but it wasn’t as creative as the pictures I see here, usually soup or spaghetti or something like that. I like your ideas!

    • Good morning, Ami. When I first heard of trunk or treat, I thought it was the strangest idea. It just didn’t sound festive to me at all, but then when I attended my first Trunk or Treat at our church, some of the “trunks” were so well done and super festive! Easy for the kids to run around the parking lot, too.

  3. Hey Pam! Love your creative foods! I’ve also done some cute ideas with food. I just love fall. I’m not really a “Halloween” kinda gal. But, my grandson comes over and shows me his outfit each year. For the last two years he was Spider-Man. Not sure what he will be this year. I guess I’ll find out! I have made a couple of his outfits through the years.

    • Spider Man sure appeals to little boys, doesn’t it? That super-hero has endured for years. To me, costumes are the biggest part of Halloween for the kids and the most fun in planning, way more than the treats. My husband and I were marveling at how costumes nowadays are more elaborate than when we were kids!

  4. we live out in the boonies so no trick or treaters for years now – our community center has had a halloween social for 23 years and love to see all the costumes there last Saturday night and enjoy a fundraising meal !!

  5. So creative, Pam! I love it. The puking pumpkin is deliciously gross, and those spider cookies look yummy. I’m not a jalepeno eater, but those mummies are adorable as are the monster burgers. So fun! I love handing out candy and seeing the neighborhood kids dressed up. Course, I also like eating the candy in between trick or treaters. Ha!

  6. My goodness Pam! You are incredible! I would want to come to your house to celebrate Halloween. We get at the most two trick or treaters. Living out in the boonies eliminates the crowd. Plus, we have a bit of snow and that really deters from kiddos arriving. Happy Halloween Pam! I loved your spunky post!

    • I would WANT you to come to my house for Halloween, Kathy. How fun would that be? Two trick-or-treaters would be disappointing for me. I probably wouldn’t even turn my porch light on.

  7. I have no trick or treaters in country. I made things for my granddaughters Halloween party she decided to have. She is 12.

  8. Oh, Pam! Ya’ll are incredible! What beautifully scary snacks!!!
    My late hubby and I used to dress up and celebrate, but those days are gone ;o(
    Thanks for sharing your fun!!! It really made me smile ;o) (Although I may have nightmares of your hubby’s scary clown mask and the bloody intestines) lol

  9. Happy Halloween I enjoy handing out the treats on Halloween and we have a lot. Not sure how its going to go tonight because its going to be so cold. Most of the time I set on the porch but its going to be to cold for that.

    • It’s going to be super-cold here, too, quiltlady. What a shame. Last year it was 70 degrees.

      I think it would be so fun to sit on my porch and hand out candy. We just don’t have enough kiddos to bother.

  10. We have lots of kids come to the house and my landlady and I love to see all the kids. We decorated yesterday and we have the candy already to shell out.

  11. I don’t celebrate Halloween. When I was little, we did go trick-or-treating, but now that I know about the darker side, I don’t celebrate it. The street I live on doesn’t have any small children, and we haven’t had any trick-or-treaters in at least five or six years. I much prefer the trunk or treats and fall festivals. I do like seeing children dressed up, just not as ghosts and things on that order.

  13. Good morning and Happy Halloween! You all are so very creative, I love everything that you all have made. My daughter who lives in the same town as my husband and us, is also very creative and she loves Halloween. She usually cooks up some cute scary things for dinner and dessert and they invite us over. We have 2 grandchildren with her our grandaughter is 17 and our grandson is 15, they always come pass out candy at our house, they live out of the city limits so they dont get trick or treaters at all. We always get more then 100, so after we eat at our daughters house they come pass out candy over here then go the the Halloween Carnival or a Haunted House, it is always so much fun. Here in our small town, Halloween is celebrated on the weekend before Halloween if Halloween falls on a week day, and so this year it was celebrated this past Saturday. Have a great day. Thank you so much for sharing your Halloween fun, I enjoyed reading it and seeing the awesome photos.

    • Halloween is more fun with family, isn’t it? My goodness – more than 100 trick-or-treaters??? I can’t even imagine what that would be like!!

      Enjoy, Alicia!

  14. We don’t get trick or treaters where we live. We dont celebrate it. I loved the cookies and monster burgers.

  15. PAM! OH MY GOODNESS! Those food dishes are just the BEST. HAHAHAAA! I loved seeing all those! Alas, my kids are grown and have no kids of their own, so Halloween is pretty much over for us. We go to bed pretty early these days too like “old people” and so this year we decided to just turn off the lights and not participate–we don’t have that many kids in this neighborhood anymore, anyhow. I made some of my kids’ costumes, and they used to enjoy it sooo much. Lots of good memories!

    • Cheryl, I fear the day will come when us “old people” won’t even bother to turn on the porch light, either. But I’m going to fight it as long as I can.

      We love our memories, don’t we??

  17. Oh my, such creative food ideas! I thought the “bloody guts” were sausages with BBQ sauce or ketchup. Our nine year old grandsons would love almost all of these. I make apple butter doughnuts for breakfast on Halloween and stew in a pumpkin for supper. We had more neighbors when our girls were young and most of them felt the neighborhood kids needed more candy from each house to make up for the small number of houses. I don’t like the horror movies that seem to go with Halloween but I enjoy the fun and creative costumes kids (and their parents) come up with. Our oldest daughter teaches third grade and she always dresses up if Halloween falls on a school day. She sent us a picture today of her in an Alice in Wonderland dress and apron. Other years she has been Minnie Mouse or a fortune teller. There seems to be so much more celebration for Halloween than there ever was when we were kids.

    • You are so right about Halloween celebrations being bigger than ever, Alice. I wish I can remember the statistic, but Halloween is a HUGE commercial success. Literally in the billions of dollars that people spend their money on.

      I’m with you – my childhood Halloweens were much, much simpler, and we still had as much fun, right?

  18. These are wonderful. I wish we were having a party so I could use some of these ideas. I did have some things to do for company coming this past weekend but they had to cancel. They will get the mummy hot dogs and skeleton Mac & cheese when they come in 2 weeks. The granddaughter will enjoy them. Love your Skeleton-in-a-Casket Charcuterie Board. I miss being a children’s librarian.

    • I posted before finishing. We used to dress up and really decorate the house, but we now live in the country and have had only 3 trick or treaters in 30 years. Once our children were grown, the decorating dwindled. Unfortunately the grandchildren either live out of town or are too old. My inner child is not happy.

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