So here’s some photos of the menu that I served at my Halloween party. The spread fed 17 guests, and I have a TON of food left over. I always seem to overestimate how much I’ll need, but it’s better to have too much food than not enough!

Mummy Hot dogs! This is an annual staple at my Halloween party. This year, I made home made biscuit dough instead of using the canned crescent rolls. It tastes better but doesn’t look very mummy-ish.

Sadly, this was the only picture I took of the food before the party started. I got so caught up in hostessing that I totally forgot to get snaps until the party was over. So forgive the rest of these pics, since they’re of leftovers!

Lemon cupcakes! I made the cupcakes from scratch but cheated on the frosting – it’s canned Betty Crocker stuff that I got for free over the summer. For the decoration, I was trying to imitate this super cute bat cupcake from Woman’s Day magazine, but it didn’t quite work out. I was in such a hurry this year and I could not find miniature peanut butter cups anywhere, since I was shopping the night before Halloween – I guess it’s a pretty popular candy! So, I tried to substitute Junior Mints, and gave up after the first few I tried. Good thing I had the cute cupcake skewers! I found those along with the Halloween cupcake liners for about .50 cents on clearance ages ago.

Pumpkin bread, and a half-eaten bowl of candy. I adapted a breadmaker recipe for carrot bread, and just substituted canned pumpkin for the carrot. This bread is especially good when served with:

A vat of pumpkin soup! This picture is terrible, but the soup was delicious. I used this recipe, and the only change I made was that I omitted the celery. This is the first soup I’ve ever made – I usually don’t care much for soups, but I really loved this one. I’ve been eating the leftovers for lunch every day because I like it so well. Here’s a slightly more appetizing picture that I snapped of it yesterday:

We visited a pumpkin patch just before Halloween, and this was a great way to use up the insides of the pumpkin instead of just tossing it. I also put the seeds to good use:

Roasted pumpkin seeds are so yummy, and really healthy too. After carving the pumpkin, I rinsed these in a colander and tossed them in olive oil. I sprinkled them with salt and baked them on a cookie sheet until they had a nice crisp texture.

I told you these pictures were all of leftovers!! This is a seven layer “Graveyard dip”. I layered refried beans, homemade guacamole, salsa, black olives, fresh chopped tomatoes, cream cheese, and shredded cheese in a pan. Then I cut round tombstone shapes out of bread, and iced “RIP” on each one, sticking it into the dip to form a haunted scene. As you can tell, the dip was a big hit. I served it with tortilla chips and wheat thins.

Jack-O-Lantern toast! I had some packages of cheese slices that were free with coupons a few months back, so I cut faces into the slices and melted them onto Sara Lee bread – which was also free with coupons!

Not pictured are the various dishes of candy and the bowl of goldfish crackers that I also set out.

I also made goodie bags for each guest:

I made a TON of treat bags for both the guests and the trick-or-treaters that never came.

I also held a costume contest and a pumpkin carving contest. I gave away three Halloween-themed prizes in each category, wrapped in spooky bags that I got as filler items at Walgreens. All of the prizes and goodie bags were also funded by coupons this year.

I hope that everyone else had an equally fun Halloween!