We’re planning a Halloween party as the one year wrap up to my Martha project. I’ve hit a few bumps along the way and thought I would share them.

First of all, why don’t people RSVP? It makes it so hard to plan things!

My biggest gripe though has to be the things I simply cannot find that I need! Martha demonstrated how to use her Halloween stencils to decorate cupcakes on her show. I can’t find them anywhere. And at this late date, I’m worried about ordering them online in case they don’t arrive in time.

I had to order black tissue paper online for my Martha tablescape. I simply could not find it anywhere. So I ended up paying $5 for shipping for a 99 cent item.

I’m looking for cheap doll parts. I’m planning to make buried alive cupcakes – chocolate cupacakes with an arm sticking up out of them. I actually found this idea in Rachel Ray’s magazine. But I can’t find doll parts anywhere for a reasonable price. I was even hoping to find a bag of cheap little dolls at the dollar store, but they only come singly for $1 each and I need at least 20 arms, so that $10 which seems like a lot. I haven’t found any online for a good price, because the cost of shipping always makes it ridiculous.

We have some fun games planned:

– donut on a string (see who can eat it first with their hands behind their backs)

– eyeball pong (ping pong ball with an eyeball on it – you try to bounce it into cups to win a prize)

– monster assembly (we are collecting bags of stuff we would normally throw out and will give each team a box to make a monster out of)

– name the body part (we’re going to put food items inside boxes and have them guess what body part it is supposed to be)

– candy corn relay

– pitch a penny into a jack o lantern

– pumpkin bowling (we’re making ghost pins out of white cups and using a small pumpkin as a bowling ball)

I’m going to start making some food and freezing it this weekend to get a jump on things. I’m making Martha’s one bowl cupcakes for the buried alive cupcakes and the stencil cupcakes if I ever find the stencil, the marshmallow ghosts in the Halloween issue, the chocolate pumpkin tart from it also, the black bean guacamole from the Halloween issue  (which I’m going to serve in a carved gourd), punch with a frozen hand floating in it along with ice cubes with gummy worms, the puff pastry cheese pumpkins from the Halloween issue, rice krispy treat coffins, a veggie tray that I need to spook up somehow, and little bowls of pink yogurt with mouths on them made of apple slices and yogurt raisins.

For decorations, we will have the luminaria (see tomorrow’s Martha Mondays), a gourd totem (from the Halloween issue) and possibly one of the toadstools from the cover of October Living. I also bought some spider web junk and caution tape, as well as all of our regular Halloween decorations.

As for costumes, Dude Martha has a store bought costume and Teen Martha will be wearing a toga I am making for her. I’m going to be Martha. Mr. MarthaAndMe is undecided. We’ve batted around a lot of ideas, including Tim Gunn, Ryan Seacrest, and Simon Cowell. His old fallback costume is a vampire (he won a prize at a church party as a child and never deviated after that). The other option is for him to be Martha also (Drag Martha).  You’ll just have to tune in after Halloween to see what he ends up as!