Happy Martha-versary to me. The end of October marked the one year anniversary of my Martha project and my blog. We decided to have a Halloween party to celebrate – and also to give me a chance to flex my Martha muscles.

Yesterday was the big day and it was the culmination of several weeks of planning and work (that’s always the problem with parties – you plan and cook and decorate and work your buns off for weeks and it’s over in a flash).

I promised to share all the details, so this will be a long post!

Costumes

First, the costumes. I was Martha. Teen Martha blew out my curly hair to look like Martha’s – I was surprised at how well it actually turned out! I wore a pink button front shirt and khaki capris. I had a pair of blue heels I was going to wear, but when I put them on , the soles disintegrated (I haven’t worn them in over 15 years!) so I ended up with some low black heels which weren’t quite what I wanted. Mr. MarthaAndMe made a home detention ankle bracelet for me to wear. I have the greatest respect for Martha and was afraid that was a little insulting, but it helped people identify who I was. I carried a Martha bouquet – paint brush, whisk and garden trowel, tied with a measuring tape.  I pointed out “good things” all night.

Mr. MarthaAndMe was a vampire. He has years of practice with vampire costumes. His mother had the cape made for him when he a child.

Teen Martha was a Roman. I sewed the toga by hand. She made the belt and headpiece. I think she looks cute. As you can see in the background, her friends were also Romans.

Dude Martha wore his gory store bought costume.

Decor

Let’s move on the decor. We made a gourd totem, from Oct Living. Actually, Mr. MarthaAndMe handled that and he did an excellent job. I don’t think I would bother doing this again, but it was fun. We put this on the front porch, but I never got a picture.

There were lots of spider webs, caution tape, orange and black streamers and balloons around also.

I spent a lot of time on the table. I made the tablescape that is in the Halloween special issue – gauze on the table and black tissue paper cut out to go around it. I had to order the tissue paper online and I found the gauze at Joann’s, but didn’t buy enough. When I realized, they were out of it. I ended up finding something similar at Walmart. I also cut the tissue paper to go around my cake plate with the ghost cake.

You can also see my luminare hanging from the chandelier.

The Food

I made a lot of food. We have tons and tons left. I’m just going to paste in the photos with captions for this:

The Games

We had several games which the younger kids enjoyed. We started with Martha’s donut on a string game. I had a hard time finding small donuts for this – regular size seemed too big. I did finally find some and everyone liked this game. One girl ate hers in one bite!

We put “body parts” in bags and the kids had to guess what they were. The best score was 6 out of 8. We had cauliflower for brains, ramen noodles for veins, an oiled tortilla for skin, dried apricots for ears, peeled grapes for eyeballs, a carved canned cranberry sauce for heart,

and gherkins with almond slivers for fingers/toes.

We also played mummy wrap, where they had to wrap each other in

toilet paper.

We played eyeball pong – each kid got a rubber eyeball and they had to bounce it and try to get into cups. Each cup had a prize and if your ball went in, you won the prize.

We also had a monster assembly game. I kept all our recyclables for several weeks. We divided them into two boxes and divided the kids into two teams. Each team got tape and scissors. We gave them five minutes to make a monster. They actually did a really great job – but they smashed them before I could get a photo of the final results.

It was an incredible amount of work. We got most of it cleaned up last night when the kids left to go trick or treating and did the rest this morning. I’m exhausted! I’m glad I did it though – I’m pretty proud of myself and think everything turned out quite well.

Happy Martha-versary to me. The end of October marked the one year anniversary of my Martha project and my blog. We decided to have a Halloween party to celebrate – and also to give me a chance to flex my Martha muscles. Yesterday was the big day and it was the culmination of several weeks … Read more →

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!

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 … Read more →

At the end of October, it will be the one year anniversary of my blog and Martha project. So it seemed fitting to have a party, in Martha’s honor (and mine of course). Halloween seemed like the logical choice. I bought Martha’s special Halloween issue of Living and got some ideas from there, but from the start my biggest challenge has been finding a way to take Martha’s ideas and make them work for a party that my kids’ friends will enjoy. Dude Martha is 11 and in middle school. Teen Martha is a high school senior. So, from the beginning, I’ve had to try to find ways to adjust Martha’s approach to make it work for a younger crowd.

First off, I wanted to make Martha invitations. She made one on her show that Dude Martha vetoed. No way would he give his friends an invitation that had a removable black eye mask. I turned to Martha’s site. He was intrigued by an invitation that involves making plaster casts of your finger and putting them in boxes with the invitation written on them. I vetoed that one – too much work and too gory. Finally I thought I found the perfect solution. Martha has a link to Pingg.com where you can create “free” online invitations that are printable.

Unfortunately, after we spent some time designing it, we realized you can’t actually print it out unless you want to pay them to mail it as a postcard. Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Mr. MarthaAndMe came to the rescue and whipped up an invitation himself using some Microsoft do-hickey. To be honest, it bothered me that the border on this goes around the whole paper, not just the ‘page’ you see, but I was done with this. Dude Martha handed them out. Teen Martha will issue Facebook invites to her peeps.

Once we formally invited people, I had to get to work on the party itself. I went out on a shopping expedition. I had only a few “must-haves” and of course I can’t find them anywhere! I want to make the gauze tablecloth with black tissue paper border that Martha has in the special issue. It sounds very simple. I found gauze material Joann’s, but I can’t find black tissue paper. Very disappointing. I’m going to see if I can order it online, but I’m sure the shipping will cost more than the tissue paper itself. I’m also looking for cheap doll body parts – we’re going to make “buried alive” cupcakes where a hand stick out the top of the cupcake.

From the Halloween Living special issue, I’m planning to make the white cake with marshmallow ghosts, guacamole with blue tortilla chips, pumpkin spiderweb cake, puff pastry and cheese pumpkins, and spinach and ricotta skulls. I’ve got some other food ideas I gathered from other sources as well. The food is definitely under control.

We’ve got some games/activities planned, but need more, so if you have suggestions, please share! We’re going to do the thing where you have boxes with different “body parts” in them (like peeled grapes for eyes) and kids will have to guess what they think it is. We’re going to do a mummy wrap contest – see who can wrap their friend in toilet paper first. We’ll also do Martha’s donut on a string contest (see who can eat it first with no hands). If the weather is decent, I want to hide little plastic pumpkins of candy outside. We also plan eyeball pong – a ping pong ball with an eye drawn on which kids will try to bounce into plastic cups to win prizes. I need more though, so please share any thoughts! Martha has a suggestion for a playlist, but it turns out Napster has several, so we’ll use those.

As for decorations, I plan to make Martha’s gourd totems, lit with Xmas lights. We will carve some pumpkins of course. I bought some spiderweb material to hang, and some crime scene tape. We have a friend who may be able to loan us some of his decorations to use.

I’m thinking of dressing up as Martha. I have blue eyes and blond hair about the same length (although mine is curly so Teen Martha would have to work some magic on that). What do you think would work for the outfit? Twin set and pearls? Or try to look like Martha on her show, in a cotton shirt and khakis and heels? If I could find a stuffed French bulldog I would carry that. I don’t know how anyone will know I am Martha.

So, as you can see, plans are under way here for a big party. I’ll share more as we get closer to the big day.

At the end of October, it will be the one year anniversary of my blog and Martha project. So it seemed fitting to have a party, in Martha’s honor (and mine of course). Halloween seemed like the logical choice. I bought Martha’s special Halloween issue of Living and got some ideas from there, but from … Read more →