Last Saturday, we were invited to a pumpkin carving party with the Lee family! There were lots of Halloween-themed treats and games for the little kids, and our whole family had a great time taking part in the festivities with friends. Stephanie and Chwan were wonderful hosts and really threw an awesome Halloween party full of fun for all ages!
On Saturday, our friends Xiaolu and Ryan threw an impressive Halloween party complete with detailed decorations, pumpkin carving, great food and games. It was a potluck so there was no shortage of delicious food, and our whole family had a great time celebrating one of our favorite holidays with friends.
Mio had so much fun with her little friends at the party, and Dan and I had a great time catching up with friends and playing board games with them, too! Xiaolu and Ryan were amazing hosts and thought of everything, and by the end of the night there were well over thirty guests taking part in the revelry. Mio was so excited that she didn’t want to leave — I think Halloween is quickly becoming one of her favorite holidays, too!
Happy Halloween! We have survived Hurricane Sandy/Frankenstorm and all of its pouring rain and howling winds it brought with it earlier this week. Thankfully, we didn’t suffer any damage to the house or cars, and didn’t even lose power. Unfortunately, some of our friends up north were not as lucky — we’re keeping them in our prayers, and hope that they’ll be able to regain a sense of normalcy back in their lives as soon as possible.
We have nothing planned for actual Halloween Day today, as we got all of our festivities out of the way this past weekend before the storm hit. Here are some photos from our Halloween activities this year!
Because Mio was sort of a Tinkerbell-esque fairy this year, I decided to wear this dress — it’s a vintage Betsey Johnson dress that I bought at a thrift store a couple years ago, and Dan always calls it my “Peter Pan dress” whenever I wear it. Instead of buying a costume, I figured I’d just wear it to be Peter Pan-ish this year. 😉
On Saturday afternoon, we took Mio to the Air & Scare event at the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is the annex to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. It was actually one of the first places I took Dan for a date when he first came to visit me in DC several years ago, when it had just opened in 2003, so it was fun to revisit it again after almost a decade. The Air & Scare is an annual event they hold at the museum, where kids can come in costume for safe indoor trick-or-treating and participate in creepy crafts, spooky science experiments, and other Halloween-themed activities. There’s storytime for younger kids like Mio, and opportunities to take photos with Star Wars characters all around the building!
Mio is too young for candy, and I knew that if we let her trick-or-treat, she would most assuredly put the candy in her mouth, so we avoided the trick-or-treating stations and just explored the museum and other activities. Between the permanent aerospace exhibits and the Halloween-themed activities, there was plenty to see!
I think the main attraction for Dan and I was seeing the retired Discovery space shuttle up close! We weren’t in DC yet when it made its final flight over the area back in April of this year, and we just missed the Endeavor space shuttle flying over California right after we moved away last month, so I had felt disappointed that we missed both opportunities to see the shuttles. Thankfully, one of the perks of living right by the nation’s capital is that a lot of such historical sights are open for viewing and can be easily visited. We stood in awe as we got to see the retired orbiter, which has made 39 successful missions in over 27 years of service as the oldest of the surviving space shuttles.
Later that night, we put Mio to bed and entrusted her to my parents in case she woke up in the middle of the night (which she never does), Dan and I went off to have some more grownup Halloween fun at our friends’ party! The theme was comic superheroes, DC vs. Marvel. We had a great time seeing a lot of our college friends again and catching up with them! 😀
Lastly, we also carved pumpkins as the weather got crappier into the weekend and we were cooped up indoors. Dan is always the skilled carver, so his is the awesome creation in the middle, but my sister Miwa and I also carved our own mini-pumpkins. Mine is the Angry Bird on the right.
Happy Halloween! Halloween is always one of my favorite days of the year — I love seeing how creative people get with their costumes and decorations, and it’s a fun occasion to dress up! Dan and I didn’t do anything last year because I was really sick on Halloween weekend, and I was really bummed… 🙁
This year, we celebrated a day early, going to a friend’s Halloween party. Dan and I both worked on our costumes for a couple hours on Saturday afternoon before going to the party. Can you guess what we were supposed to be?
We may just look like a generic jock and cheerleader, but those who are sharp may have guessed that we were supposed to be characters from Glee! Since the show started airing, we’ve actually had several people tell us that Dan looks a lot like Finn Hudson, the star quarterback of the school and one of the central characters in the show. We’ve even had a random passerby come up to us at a restaurant to point out that they thought there was a striking resemblance. A lot of people say there’s a resemblance, some don’t see it… I can see that they have similarities in stature, the pale complexion, the pigeon chest, the general face shape, and hairstyle, but I think most of the likeness is in their facial expressions, like the face they have when they’re flustered or confused, or when they raise an eyebrow in a questioning look.
Anyway, we had enough people bring the likeness to our attention that we decided to run with it as an idea for Dan’s Halloween costume this year.
The costume was pretty easy — we took a plain red Nike jersey and stuck a huge number 5 on the front and back for Finn’s football outfit…
We stenciled and cut out white letters to spell out “HUDSON” for the back:
I have no such resemblance to any of the characters in Glee, but we decided to have some fun playing off of the pregnancy factor that I shared with Quinn Fabray, Cheerios head cheerleader and Finn’s former flame who was pregnant during most of the first season.
For the Cheerios uniform, I just ordered a simple red and white cheerleader uniform, and spent the afternoon meticulously stenciling out the letters WMHS (for William McKinley High School) onto red cloth and outlining them in white and black cloths, and gluing it onto the chest of the uniform.
Costumes complete, we headed over to our friend Joletta’s, who was hosting a Halloween party at her house.
There was lots of delicious food and we played a few fun Halloween-themed games! Afterwards, those of us who brought pumpkins gathered around to do some pumpkin-carving.
The completed pumpkins! They all came out so well!!! Can you guess which one is mine…?
I made the Totoro jack-o-lantern! 🙂 I was actually quite pleased with the result:
Dan went with his signature scary style with the carving, and created this two-faced jack-o-lantern. He carved it really fast, too; we were impressed! (He actually finished this complicated design before I completed my simple little Totoro… haha*)
Everyone at the Halloween party was dressed in such fun costumes! I really enjoyed seeing what everyone came as. :)Â Huge thanks to Joletta and Mapolo for hosting and organizing such a fun party!
We brought our pumpkins home, and I let Piper play with it since this is his first Halloween with us. Diesel was uninterested, apparently fed up from my past Halloween antics. Piper ended up biting off part of Totoro’s ear, though, so we had to repair it. 🙁
Today, we spent the day doing some major cleaning around the house and just prepared some candy for potential trick-or-treaters that might come by this evening. We hope everyone had a safe and fun-filled Halloween!!!
