Challoween

We have gotten in the habit of celebrating both Halloween itself and Shabbatoween, the nearest Shabbat to Halloween; the former we do in our neighborhood and the latter is hosted by Jessica and Jules. This year, however, Halloween was a Friday night, and since our neighborhood seems to be the best for trick or treating, we hosted. There were more people than could sit down for dinner, and I was rattled by having had a lockdown at work that day (it turned out that there was no danger, but I was crouched under my desk for thirty minutes listening to the helicopters outside). Nonetheless we had spaghetti with eyeballs (meatballs with mozzarella-and-olive eyes), and apple vampire fangs, and challah stuffed with candy corn:

We managed to stuff all the kids into a frame for a photo before we headed out trick or treating. A vampire, a bat, a mummy, a Sith lord (that's Jordan), an Ewok (Aaron), an 80s chick, Jace, a demon lawyer (in the hockey mask - he served us all bloody papers), a gnome, and Kermit.

Jordan's costume put his camp-made lightsaber to great use; his robe was large enough to properly swirl out behind him, and picked up a hilarious amount of mud, too. Real Sith lords probably don't have this problem because the Empire's facilities are so clean. Aaron's Ewok costume took some doing... we had ordered a bear hat online, but it didn't come in time, so we repurposed a cat-ears headband by covering the ears with brown sock toes. Add a brown t-shirt for the snood, and that fantastic staff constructed by Dale from stuff in the yard, and voila! Ewok chieftain. His raccoon, Silvercoat, was an Ewok too, with a snood made of a brown sock. 

The grownups were in the spirit as well. I was mama Ewok, in the hat originally intended for Aaron.