H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N!

I love Halloween. It has always been one of my favorite holidays. I have so many fun and happy memories from this time of year, both as a child and as an adult, and I think it's partly because of the traditions my family always honored year after year. Even now, there are just certain things that I have to do in order to really enjoy and celebrate the holiday.

For one thing, I always have to carve a pumpkin. There's no better family bonding than sticking your hand into a big pile of pumpkin goop, and eventually coming up with a creative design together. This year, I ended up attending a pumpkin carving party with my dad, where we joined family and friends from his neighborhood to see who could carve the most creative pumpkin. Two ghouling grueling hours later, I came up with this (and boy was my hand sore and cramped from those darn pumpkin carving knives):



I also love dressing up every year. There's just something really fun about coming up with a creative costume design and putting it all together for the big reveal on Halloween. I always have such a great time checking out everyone's costumes and seeing who has the goofiest, weirdest, or scariest idea. Of course, it's fun to watch other people react to your costume too. This year, I think we had one of the funniest ones at the party we went to, as DD was Luigi and I was Mario from the Super Mario Brothers! (If you are reading this and have no idea what I'm talking about then you are dead to me.) The mustaches we wore were pretty freaking hilarious, I gotta say. Check out my pics on Facebook!

We only got a few trick-or-treaters this year, but they were sooo cute! They reminded me of how much fun I used to have back in the day when we would go all over our neighborhood trick-or-treating, and getting so excited about how much candy we were getting.

I guess in some ways, I'm just not ready to admit I'm a grown-up.