Happy Halloween

Well, I was going to bore you with the goodies I made for the kids' school parties or the pumpkin cake I took to my job, but the pictures weren't all that great and seriously - every other blogger out there has simply amazing, beautiful and festive versions of vegan cupcakes baked up for Hallow e'en, and I don't... I'm not a fancy, foo-foo decorative sort of baker-person, and I'm not apologising for that, I just think I'm not going to post any food pictures here at all tonight because there's MUCH better ones to be found out there...

OK, so without food, this is as interesting as it gets, the crafty little "Happy 'Hall'-O-Ween" treat bags I made for my high-schooler and her friends. (Our last name is "Hall" if you're thinking I can't spell or something). We filled 'em with cookies and gummi eyeballs and other teen-age Halloween nastiness.

As for the rest of the "holiday" if you MUST know, well, parts of it were rather...... UN-vegan! (I know, the horror, gasp!!).

Here's proof. My daughter dressed up in FURS. Yes, I know, throw red paint and stick PETA stickers on me...

Let me explain. I grew up in Alaska where my father was a physician for the State of Alaska (anyone familiar with Northern Exposure? Yes, that was our life...) and we literally lived in inaccessible, snowbound, remote villages for a good part of the year. One of the women in the tiny village of Anuktuvuk Pass, Alaska sewed this beautiful fur (yes, fur!) lined parka for me and presented it as a gift when my parents and I left the village. (You can't see it, as it's got a fabric outer-coat, but it's lined solid with rabbit, seal, wolverine and wolf fur. Yikes!)

As you can imagine, fur or not, it is very sentimental to me but for the most part, it just hangs in the closet. I have let my two older children wear it very carefully, for one night of trick-or-treating and have shown it to school groups that were studying the Arctic and so forth.

However my middle Sprout wore it over ten years ago, so I had completely forgotten about our "tradition" of bringing it out for Halloween... As you can see, my 8-year-old BARELY fit into it this Halloween, (I wore it when I was 3, 4 and 5) but she wanted to wear it as her sisters had, so we gave it a try. Evidently October weather in Washington State is slightly balmier than Alaskan winters, as she was sweating profusely after 15 minutes and opted for the Spiderman Jammies she had underneath.

I'm planning to have my real, genuine dead-animal fur Alaskan parka carefully and professionally cleaned and stored in a protective box to save, but I glad my kids got a chance to try wearing it. Most of all though, I'm SO thankful we live in a country where we have the resources and materials available so that we no longer need animal skins to clothe us and keep us warm!


OK, so tonight, we went trick-or-treating with friends. They have Star Wars characters, err... no... little boys who go to school with my youngest Sprout - and they are also proud parents to a new (and adorable) little girl whom they had recently adopted from China.

Everyone KNOWS a one-year-old needs to celebrate Halloween and dress up in a silly costume. Right?

She obviously had no clue what was going on, but the grown-ups and teenagers-trying-to-be grown-ups had a good time walking and talking through the autumn evening - and the little ones had a BLAST begging the neighbors for rotten candy!

That's my Halloween story, no cupcakes, no steaming cups of cider, just some non-vegan-ness and an evening with friends.

Hope your evening was wonderful too!