Spooky Social Distancing with My Pod

Let me start with this adorable granddaughter posing in late October with the hanging basket I put in my bicycle basket every spring. This year's growth is stupendous and has survived at least one if not two frosts already. In the spirit of total honesty, she did not like the bell bottoms or the hair ribbon and discarded them as soon as I took the photo. 

I started hosting Spooky Suppers for my family decades ago.  I was much younger and had a lot more energy. I seem to remember the first year after we built our garage I invited the whole neighborhood (like 30 kids) to supper before our city's trick or treat. We turned the playhouse into a haunted house and served spooky food. These were the days before digital cameras or phones with cameras. I probably didn't even have film in the camera we did have, so no pictures. Every once in a while I come across the flyer I hand drew and had photocopied. 

My youngest grandson turned two years old the Saturday before Halloween and his parents hosted immediate family for a special party. My talented daughter-in-law really outdid herself with all the spooky food. This guacamole was delicious as well as a big hit with the five and seven year olds! 

I contributed some spider deviled eggs which took me a ridiculous amount of time to make. Between the broken arm in March and previous hand issues, I think I need to rethink some of the things I used to do and try lower my expectations of myself. 

She made this nifty pasta salad by adding some food coloring to cooked pasta and cutting the jack o lanterns out of cucumbers. This idea is a keeper!

These adorable spiders are premade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with licorice legs. So cute! The kids loved them, while the adults ate mummy hotdogs and chili. 

She even made and decorated these cupcakes all by herself!!! - while working full time as a virtual first grade teacher with 60 students and parenting three children aged 6 and under. She is wonder woman. 

The party guests were grandparents, parents, and the grandchildren in our "pod", the local kids for whom I provide daycare. I was going for "hippy" but look more like "Carol Bascom". 

My other daughter-in-law (I am doubly blessed) hosted the pod for dinner on Halloween night. I saw something similar to this pie on King Arthur Flour's Instagram (I think). Again, with total honesty, I used readymade pie crust, instead of making my own. 

I used the scraps of pie crust to make these mummy tarts. The recipe was definitely from King Arthur Flour. 

After the trauma of spider deviled eggs, I added some red food coloring and made pumpkins. I did try to find green onions for more realistic stems, but they seem to be the new shortage? I went to two grocery stores (don't tell my husband) and ended up with green olives. 

My youngest daughter made this delicious taco dip. She did make a black olive spider. 

She even arranged the cheese slices as a pumpkin face. 

Somehow I did not get any photos of the rest of the food - sandwiches, vegetables including these new bite sized mini cucumbers which I am in love with (WHY can't I go shopping?) and a layered pumpkin cake which was amazing. 

And here are my out-of-town grandchildren who I miss terribly. They dressed as Corona Virus and the CDC. Their parents are both healthcare workers and, trust me, would dress them as CDC workers 24/7 if they could. 

Their neighborhood held a safe trick or treat by placing tables in driveways with treats spread out. Children came and chose a treat from the table. 

My son's neighborhood was overly creative with tubes from windows dropping candy and one house where they tied plastic soldiers with parachutes to the candy bars and blew them off the roof with a leaf blower. 

Some people kept the kids home and had candy hunts (like Easter Egg hunts). My  goddaughter did this by hiding the candy, turning off the lights and giving her children flashlights to search.  

We decided to skip the treating this year. We were not comfortable with groups of people visiting our porch. 

Happy Halloween!!!!