The Taste of Home Halloween Food&Fun Round-Up

Last year I was about twenty-seven weeks pregnant when Halloween rolled around. Although I'd always enjoyed baking (but had frequently been too overburdened with school&work to really find the time for it), & Halloween, the kitchen-centric portion of my celebration reached new heights for several reasons:

1. I was a lot...rounder...than I had thought I would be, when I (as has been my tradition) decided on my 2008 Halloween costume - on November 1, 2007. I had planned to be Princess Leia. In the gold bikini. Which would NOT have been cute with a pregnant belly. So for the first time, possibly ever in my life, I was not dressing up for Halloween at all.

2. Pregnancy means sobriety. Sobriety means attendance at our usual Halloween Bash would be less fun, as the lone costume-less, pregnant, sober attendee - that I would also have to drive an hour, one-way, to attend.

3. My "nesting" instinct kicked in way before my third trimester. In fact, in some senses, it kicked in before I even found out I was pregnant. It kicked in pretty much when my husband, "My Prince," & I, moved from the "Mold Hole" (i.e. the townhouse we leased when we got married, which we strongly suspect had a mold problem) to our cute little garden home in a cute little subdivision on the outskirts of our cute little city. The home (& subdivision) screamed, "Nest! Nest!" at every turn. So, inspired to do just that, I convinced my sweet husband, in his agreeable state of newlywed bliss, to let me turn our new kitchen into a paradise of green&pink. My side of the bargain was that in making the kitchen into such a feminine scene, I'd spend a lot more time in it, making yummy things for him.

4. The Taste of Home Halloween Food&Fun digest. You know, one of those little mini-magazines at the checkout at the grocery store, in between the tabloids & the Archie comics. This particular one had an inviting batch of lollipop ghosts & pumpkin cookie pops on the cover, which made my pregnant belly rumble & my pregnant heart pitter-pat. The fact that My Prince's boss had two small boys, who rarely got sugary treats, justified my impulse - I HAD to buy it.

My Prince thumbed through it, took it to the office with him, let his boss thumb through it, & came home to inform me that I was going to have to make ghastly pear ghosts, monster caramel apples, & pumpkin cookie dip. I had been thinking I'd possibly get around to a quick&easy cookie recipe, but the men (& boys) won out:

(monster caramel apples)

*

Fast-forward to the present...

My baby girl, "Pretty Little Bare Feet," was born.

My Prince received his dream job offer less than two weeks afterward.

Shortly after that we moved into our new (bought!) house, in our new (quieter) subdivision, in our new town.

& for now I am happily busy...

...being a wife to the sweetest, sexiest man in the world...

...being a mama to the most adorable little girl in the world...

...aspiring to be a full-time socialiate...

...baking&cooking...& amassing more&more brightly colored, cute cookbooks...

...cleaning & making beds...

...decorating our new home (& making it colorful!)...

...doing my Crunch Yoga Body Sculpt DVD, & EA Active on the Wii; running; & walking...

...doing laundry...

...dressing our whole family as colorful&cute&preppy as I can manage (on a budget right now, since we just bought a home, & are paying off student loan debt, on one income)...including our Maltese, "the White Dog"...

...learning to sew on the sewing machine Santa Claus (my mama) gave me last year...

...lunching with other ladies who lunch...

...playing games with, & reading stories to, my baby girl...

...reading actual books (fun ones!, novels!, things that aren't assigned for class & aren't cases!)...

...running errands, including endless grocery shopping...

...taking bubble baths...

...taking Pretty Little Bare Feet to baby gymnastics classes...

...& whatever other projects I give my A.D.D. self to complete!

*

My current project:

My Taste of Home Halloween Food&Fun Round-Up (2009 edition)

I saw it at the checkout again. I bought it again. & this year I have the gumption&time to really take it head-on & make as much out of it as I can! (& I still have last year's copy.)

Photos&reviews to come...