The past couple of years have been a challenge for many of us. Trying to think of ways to stay connected in 2020 wasn’t easy. For Halloween, none of our grandchildren went out Trick-or-Treating, and they were sad. So we all decided to quarantine for a couple weeks before, and then have a big Halloween party here! I was so busy getting it all pulled together, I didn’t get as many pictures as I hoped I would. But here’s some of the things we did.

Ronnie drove all the way to “The Red Barn” in Santaquin, Utah to pick up their famous apple cider cake donuts. They are well worth the drive! I had him get a couple extra boxes to deliver some older couples in our neighborhood.

We also made home-made root beer in my big witch’s cauldron. I learned after the fact not to place this too close to a wall or drapery . . . I had lots of brown dots to clean up afterward. ☺ Steph made her signature “Dinner in a Pumpkin”, with homemade French bread, and we also dipped caramel apples for the first time ever! Those were a huge hit with the kids as well as the adults!

We used a block of “Peter’s Caramel” from Orson Gygi in Salt Lake, and drizzled them with melted milk chocolate and a variety of crushed candy bars. This caramel is supposedly what they use at Disneyland for their caramel apples. It’s easy, tastes yummy, and you don’t have to sit and open 12,000 little squares of Kraft caramel. Orson Gygi has tips and recipes on their website for many ways to use the Peter’s Caramel.

I pulled out my Great-Uncle’s old antique typewriter and made a fun display on the table, this idea was again thanks to my friend KJ – the Halloween Queen!!! She is the one who gave me the idea for the dish soap potion bottles I put in my kitchen window.

I had some cute Halloween crafts for the kids to make. The first one was a spider made from black craft foam. We helped the kids trace each of their hands, and cut them out of the foam. Then they overlapped them, glued googly eyes on them, and drew a mouth with a white Sharpie marker.

The second craft was a cute ghost pillow. I had pre-made these, inserting pom-pom trim in the seam. Then I printed off a variety of ghost faces for the kids to choose from. They had the choice of either drawing their face on, or cutting one from black felt and gluing it on. The younger kids had fun drawing on theirs with Pigma-Pen markers which do not bleed or fade on fabric.

I had ordered my favorite recycled milk bottle bags from “Natural Life” for the kids to keep all their things together and take home with them. “Natural Life” offered bags specifically for Halloween last year, and they were perfect!

Once we finished all the crafts, we put on our favorite Halloween movies, “Blackbeard’s Ghost” and “Hocus Pocus”. The kids had a fun time by carefully adding the left over dry ice from the root beer into our science laboratory of dish soaps before they went home.

It was nice to be together again after so many months of isolation, and we were able to make it a fun time for everyone in light of the unprecedented Covid pandemic. Even when life takes some unforeseen twists and turns, it’s always possible to do SOMETHING to bring LIGHT back into the picture. Hoping your day is filled with LIGHT!

Love Ya, Les ☺

Family

Halloween 2020 – Covid Style