Halloween 2015 is in full swing!
Last year I swore Halloween would not slip through my fingers again, and I'm proud to declare that so far in 2015: Halloween is ON! The best part? It's not even Halloween yet!
Last night Dylan and I hosted our annual Spooky Movie Night, but this time gave it a little twist.
It was ZOM-B-Q!
As you could have guessed, it was a Zombie themed BBQ. I couldn't have picked a more fun party to plan if I tried. I'm not sure when inspiration hit exactly, but I have to give the catchy title "Zom-B-Q" credit to a coworker of mine. (Prior to I was calling it a "Zombarbecue")
We decided a few preliminaries:
1. It would have movies, because we always do that.
2. We'd build a Meat Man and encouraged guest to bring their own "flesh" to cook at the party. (similar to a "bring your own meat" party we've attended before, lots of fun.)
3. We'd have a costume contest to encourage attendees to dress up
4. Cocktails & Mocktails
MOVIES!
We attempted a twist on the movie aspect, and decided to play "The Best of the Worst" (quick backstory: search "the Best of the Worst" on youtube the next time you're bored, you will not be disappointed.)
I did a little google fu to decide which movies to play this year. I wanted it to have an eating theme moreso than a zombie theme ... mostly because I'm not a big fan of the lack of sleep weeks after watching zombie movies ...but I digress. The two we decided to watch this year were:
The Gingerdead Man (starring Gary Bucey, srsly. How do you not?)
Deathbed: The Bed That Eats
We rented each of them from amazon for around $4. Worth. Every. Penny.
Now, the rules up there are teeny so here's what it said:
Pay $1, write your name, put your name in the jar for the movie you think our judges will declare the Best of the Worst.
Bonus points: this was an excellent use of those cute little sake bottles we always seem to keep. I just made sure to cut the strips for the names small enough to fit in there.
Now, I'll admit, I didn't advertise the game well enough at the party to get people to actually play, so the one guy who did play - won his $1 back. But! An excellent concept, I'm still pretty proud of it. What would have happened otherwise, was that the winner would be randomly drawn from the declared "best of the worst" movie's jar - and they'd get to keep the pot. Fun, right? See, it's worthy of some pride. Just remember to be a little more vocal than I was should you choose to play the same game.
From here, we prepped the pad for movie watching:
Peggy & Sherman modeling for me just how cozy everything was:
We brought out some extra pillows and always leave that room on the rug, people seem to enjoy curling up on the floor to watch some ridiculous movies.
I know you're all champing at the bit to find out who the best of the worst was.
Winner: Deathbed: The Bed That Eats.
I'm not going to give away too much - well one because that's impossible. The movie can't be given away it has ZERO plot or sequence that makes any sense at all! But it is hilariously bad, and we're all pretty sure that Seth MacFarlane got the voice for Stewie from the "painting man" who quasi narrates this film.
MEAT MAN!
You may or may not know this about me, but I can be a little .... obsessive. No, that's a bad word for it ... let's go with "enthusiastic" yes, much better. So when Halloween is a-coming (which is what like around July for me?) I start hitting the internet. Google, Pinterest, all of the usual haunts. This year, I was struck with inspiration when I saw this beauty:
Ours may not have laid out quite as ... neat or ... structured. But inviting your guests to help you build a meat man, well that's a jolly good time.
I took on the task of creating meat man's meat face:
This is absolutely, 100% as fun as it looks. I took this lovely blogger's advice and used my broiler pan, as well as only 1 pound of beef. From there, just whip up any old tried and true meatloaf recipe & shape a face. We used onions to make the face, Dylan gets full credit for the brilliant idea of using the onion end as eyes. I threw meat face in the oven about an hour before guests would be arriving and viola!
I decided I'd go ahead and make meat man's brain as a side dish.
You can't have a ZOM-B-Q without BRAAAAIIIIINS!
Okay, now this one was really fun! I saw this amazing feat of culinary mastery in passing on pintrest and went straight to amazon to get me my brain mold.
The recipe calls for shrimp, but for the sake of cost and avoiding any food allergies, I used a couple of cups of fake crab (KRAB!) instead - I also completely forgot about the mayo and didn't add any hot sauce. But! It turned out great! In fact, we got a lot of compliments from our guests!
We'd also found this tasty cheese at costco, I believe it was wensleydale and cranberry. Something that started out so sophisticated and probably geared more towards Thanksgiving/Christmas - but when we saw it - one thing came to mind: Zombie skin
From there, Meat Man was prepped and ready to roll!
I friggin love Halloween.
As our guests arrived, we fired up the grill and put together the rest of MEAT MAN!
Yes, you're seeing that correctly. Our dear, dear friend was
beside himself with pride for ensuring Meat Man was *ahem* in fact a man.
Not seen: chicken fingers, meat balls (courtesy of the friend who crafted meat man's manhood there) about a million brats and sausages + some delicious grilled veggies and kababs!
My meatloaf head wasn't the tastiest thing, but the whole cost was less than $5 and if all it ended up being was decoration: WORTH IT!
COSTUME CONTEST!
We promised our guests a costume contest to try and win "coveted trophies." This leaves the door wide open! Let your imagination run wild. We came up with these gems:
Now, I don't know if this is true for everyone -but to me - nothing screams "Halloween" louder or more fragrantly than spray paint.
We did a little modification to 2nd prize and made a stand from a lid - one screw and some hot glue later - bam!
Shiny and beautiful prizes your friends will surely fight over.
Wait for the doorbell to ring and watch as the lovely costume train enters your home!
Zombie Dr. Who and ... date, haha
Hippy + that shirt! I should have recorded video, it made sounds and the eye shifted around!!
Blanche Devereaux and one of her dates, who was themed appropriately for the undeadedness of the evening.
My Spoon's too big! My spoon is too big!
I am a banana!
Winners of Bronze!!
It's peanut butter jelly time! They were jam though, specifically, and it came with a joke that was not G rated in the slightest but their mastery here was fantastic and earned them the coveted 2nd prize trophy.
First place went to a family: Mom, Dad and 3 kids. Their newborn was an adorable tiny little shark and everyone else were shark bite victims. SO CUTE. I didn't snap a pic (kids, blogs, you know.) But they were FANTASTIC!
Dylan and I were Kermit & Miss Piggy
(so in love with my costume this year!! I can't wait to wear it again next week!)
COCKTAILS & MOCKTAILS!
Drinking is fun, okay, it just is. Here's the thing though, it's still fun with or without booze. We've got some good friends who have opted out of booze, so we've always been inclined to come up with some mock-tails at parties. But not only that, our friends have children! So when we have parties that kids can come and party too, it's all the more fun for kids to get to enjoy a fancy mocktail right?
This year we made:
Apple Jack-O-Lanterns (which really, all we did was spooky up the title of a cocktail called Apple Jack that Dylan's been perfecting for a while.)
Apple Jack the cocktail is made from Apple Jack the apple brandy, mixed with Dylan's own cinnamon infused bourbon, some lemon-lime soda and a little cherry juice.
Topped off with one of these cute things:
Then there's the Zombie Eyes cocktail - 100% stolen from the internet, is frozen lychees with frozen grapes to create those floating eyes, gin, lychee juice, and ginger beer.
Behind the giant booze tower is a little bottle of Sprite.
That was one of the mocktails.
Here's the beauty part though, I found a recipe online for "Bat Juice" that is simply black licorice infused lemon lime soda. The instructions were to "place 10 sticks of black licorice into a 1 liter bottle a few hours before the party starts."
I'm pretty sure it's a Halloween Prank.
I stuck 2 black twizzlers into that bottle of soda and it erupted darn near to the ceiling.
I had to switch counters to bring it, overflowing, over to the sink, and then clean up that whole fiasco. Who won though? I did! Because enough if it survived to still be offered up at the party, so take that!
THEN! We had a pitcher of watermelon Kool-Aid mixed with more lemon lime soda and that was our "Night of the Living Dead Punch." (I just didn't get a photo of it)
Some evening highlights:
Peggy was the belle of the ball (did you expect less from her?)
This picture of the banana and a candy corn who look like old pals
When Dylan hit the hay, and only a few party goers remained, we decided to ambush him.
I don't know *why* this was so hilarious, but I'm laughing again reliving it.
Recap:
We have amazing friends.
Halloween is a wonderful time.
Meat + candy.
LIFE IS GOOD.
