A Very Halloweenie Week

Where most people celebrate a holiday in one day, we here at the Hargrave home like to drag them out over a three or four day period. Here's the ookie-spooky week in recap.

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At the beginning of the week, Matt and I (notice the proper use of English here) made some super scary chocolate covered pretzels for Family Night. It was way easy and fun, and they were reeeaaallly tasty.

Here's Matt, deep in concentration making a gnarly witch finger.

And here's me making something else, I don't know what. We watched the TV show, "Ace of Cakes" as we did this, so it made us feel like we were way cooler than we actually were.

I don't know, I think we did pretty good! They looked like the pictures on the box at least...or close...
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Thursday night we were invited over to a friends' house for a huge dinner and pumpkin carving party. There were like, 50 people there, but we all found a spot and got busy with our veggies.

The creative artist at work.

Bennett's jack-o-lantern before...

...and after. We tried to make it look like him, with just two little teeth on the bottom and happy squinty eyes, but in the end it just looked more like a pumpkin with some holes cut in it. Bennett seemed to like it anyway.

The finished product. Ooooooo spooookyyyyy!

Matt's is on the right, Bennett's is the little one in the middle, and mine is on the left, with the face smashed in. I tried using a new tool to carve with this year--a hammer. It did not disappoint. A hammer did in two minutes what usually takes me about an hour to do with a knife. (For those of you who don't know, I am somewhat of a violent pumpkin carver, which is why there are no pictures of me carving...too graphic for our younger viewers. :)

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Friday night was the chili cook off and trunk-or-treat held by our ward. This was the only time, I am ashamed to admit, that Matt and I dressed up the entire holiday. We are usually much more spirited. It was cute though, with prizes for the primary kids' costumes and lots and lots of chili.

I do not make very good chili, but I found I make a pretty decent pumpkin stew. It was a hit! Thanks for the recipe, Mom, and yay for keeping traditions alive!

And here is my handsome husband, straight from the 80's.

I have to say, Matt's costume was pretty dang funny (maybe because he has no hair in real life?) but I didn't get a shot of the whole thing. Anyway, just imagine him in super short shorts and tube socks. :) Apparently it surpassed even the primary kids' costumes. The primary president thought he was supposed to be Nephi (with a mullett??!) and gave him the "most spiritual" award. Matt was a little deflated after that.

After dinner we all went out to the parking lot and trunk-or-treated. This was one of the first times I have ever pass out candy instead of recieving it. And yes, I am almost 23.
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Halloween day we decorated the outside of our house (the inside has been decorted since October 1st) and got ready for trick-or-treators. However, there wern't too many witches and goules for us to give candy to this year, since we live in the middle of a construction zone. I can tell you this though, the ones that did come made quite the haul.

The haunted entryway. You never know what kind of creepy and horrifying creatures may lurk here...

AAAHHHHH!! There's one now!!

Passing out candy to the few dedicated trick-or-treators who came our way.

And then it was time to do some tricking and treating of our own!

Actually, Bennett got a little bit of a chest cold from trunk-or-treating the night before, so we only went to one house, and it was the home of our good friends. Maybe this is kind of like cheating...

...but I think it still counts.

We love Halloween!



Rejoicing in our spoils! BWAHAHA!

And, or course, what is Halloween without eating at least one piece of candy? Here's Bennett enjoying his first ever tootsie roll. What a great day! Happy Halloween, everybody!