Halloween in Review

You want pictures? I got pictures! Our Halloween 2009 Live Clue party was a mixed bag, from the Hostesses point of view. While everyone had fun (it seemed), things went a bit off track and we did not have time to do everything we had planned. Which meant a lot of the very hard work, involving lots of sweat and tears (thankfully no blood) was all for naught except to make my house look very cool indeed. But there it is.

I don't think I will be doing it again unless things are very, very different (read: not at my house and with many other hands to make light work), but we did have fun.

Halloween was kind of celebrated in two phases this year: Phase one consisted of The Viking taking the children trick-or-treating while Daria, Dear Mrs. Smith and I ran frantically around my house finishing last-minute touches for the party.

Redheaded Snippet showed she truly is her mother's daughter by recycling an old costume, the one she wore as the genie in the school's production of Aladdin last year. Man-Cub, I think, needs no introduction.

I have always wanted to do this to my dining room windows and, this year, Daria made it happen with a dollar-store vinyl tablecloth and some packaging tape. It looks cool day or night.

I reworked the hutch potions display a bit, adding a few things found along the way.

We had originally planned on using several rooms in the house as the rooms in Clue. It didn't pan out, which was a crying shame since Daria had done a beautiful job staging my "library" as the Study. Most of the stuff displayed is hers and I want to keep it for always but that would be over her dead, cold, still and lifeless body.

Again, in the candlelight you couldn't see the remains of duct tape on the front of this chest and the rest of the room looked perfectly dim and flickery.

Who opened the linen closet? And why? Believe me, I tried to keep you from seeing it, but I've been having trouble uploading photos to picnik.com lately. Oh well.

A shot of the living room, excuse me, I mean the Lounge, just as everyone was starting to arrive. I don't know who put that giant pad of paper there, but I bet it was the same rascal who opened the linen closet door (maybe it was Lady Grey making her presence known)! Just try to imagine it isn't there!

The piano in all its glory. The shadows make it hard to see, I know, but it looked smashing in the candlelight.

There's the "front" of the Lounge. I've always suspected I would like white slipcovers for all the furniture and this experience proved me right. I loved how it all looked draped in white! And, looky, will you? There's Professor Plum!

Hmmm, and apparently, he and Madame Blanche know each other, or are in the process of working on it (that's my friend of kitchen-organizing fame, Mrs. Councillor Nugent, and her marvelous husband!)

Speaking of husbands, there's mine as a very dapper Colonel Mustard, with Redheaded Snippet as the long departed Lady Grey creeping up to "spook" him. We had more guests than original Clue characters so we made up a few.

Here is the somewhat elderly, sometimes crochety, but delightfully spry Lady Marmalade (played to perfection by my very young friend who is an old crony of Daria's but doesn't have a blog name yet)!

Daria as Miss Black. I wanted desperately for her to use a German accent and call herself Fraulein Schwarz but she wouldn't go for it. She felt she had suffered enough for the party by wearing heels all night. If you knew her in person you would understand how ridiculous this costume truly is. You can't see it, but she's holding a black riding crop that she made with a wooden dowel and duct and electrical tapes. And that cigarette is a complete and utter fake (Daria doesn't smoke)!

Man-Cub was delighted to be allowed to hold a pipe between his teeth all evening as Mr. Green. He only agreed to this part because of the pipe and the mustache. And it helped that his favorite color is green. It is no coincidence that he is sitting protectively (or is it menacingly?) in front of the vat o' candy.

Dear Mrs. Smith was the perfect Miss Scarlet. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo that does her costume justice. But she loved that cigarette holder and made her presence known by the little trail of molting feathers left everywhere she went!

There I am, as Mrs. Peacock, sizing up The Colonel. I may just call him that from now on. I had decided to call him Colonel Sanders all night long, just to annoy him, but I never got the chance.

Looks like The Colonel and Mr. Green are sealing some kind of shady business deal, don't you think? Or maybe its allowance negotiations.

The Colonel again. I think the photographer really liked his costume. Or, just really liked him!

Menacingly, definitely menacingly.

There we all are, the whole motley crew.

We had a scavenger hunt. Mom hid all the weapons throughout the area and left us clues to find them. It was so much fun even though it was a bit difficult and took forever! Our first clue led us to the local convenience store where we had to buy a pack of cigarettes to get the next clue. Here's Madame Blanche working it out.

They all look kind of frustrated, no? We had to have a discussion about sportsmanship and being a sore loser with Man-Cub after this (his team lost).

Unfortunately, I don't have any other photos of the scavenger hunt (my team was too busy winning-HA HA!) but here's Miss Scarlet settling in for a round of Pictionary. The Hunt and Pictionary were originally intended (along with a round of Dutch Blitz--a favorite among our group) as a means of winning three extra Clue cards left over after all the others were evenly distributed among the four teams for the actual Clue game. But we ran out of time after one round of Pictionary.
I forget what Madame Blanche had to draw, but it seems that little French Maid costume wasn't keeping her warm enough, even on that unseasonably warm, humid night! Oh, yes, it was "Shaun of the Dead". They got it, despite her initial misgivings about her abilities. And the party, unfortunately, ended shortly after as she and Professor Plum had to get home to relieve their babysitter.

So, though it was not as we had planned, everyone had a good time. It was fun tearing around our town and the next two over, racing the other team to get to the other clues, even if it was pouring rain at one point. We had to go into Shop-Rite, Blockbuster, McDonald's, Wawa, Friendly's, The Ritz movie theater and even the local Police Station to find clues. We had to walk through woods with flashlights, sneak into someone's yard (turns out Mom knew them and had gotten permission first) and lift someone up to get the rope out of a tree. And then there was the revolver and another clue stuck way up high on the cross in the front yard of my mom's church! Mrs. Peacock almost hit Colonel Mustard with her car, Lady Grey almost peed her pants with laughter while sitting on Miss Black's and Lady Marmalade's shoulders (a near-crime in retribution for which they sort of dropped her), Madame Blanche had to buy a pack of cigarettes, Colonel Mustard inadvertently stole a roll of duct tape from McDonald's thinking it was a clue, Lady Marmalade ran through the pouring rain with no umbrella which caused her hair to run, Miss Scarlet had to take an emergency wee in the woods, and Miss Black had a rather painful encounter with the flashlight she didn't see sitting on the passenger seat. Lasting memories were made.

Another Halloween for the books. Now on to Thanksgiving!