It's been quite a difficult couple of weeks – it usually is around this time of year. Luckily, Halloween was just around the corner to lift our spirits and help us forget about all the drama that's been going on lately.
We kicked things off with our usual tradition of setting up the Halloween tree, which looked even more ghoulish this year. We always try to add something new to the tree, and this year didn’t disappoint.
But we did something a little different this time and decorated our coffee table with a Book of Shadows, Resident Evil and Charmed novels, along with an assortment of hauntingly cool items. Among them were skeleton heads, blood bags, shovels, a crystal ball, and of course, the ceramic Jack O' Lantern candy holder and cauldron cup from Ghostly.
We also jazzed up the shelf above our TV with a couple of Halloween items, including two more ceramic Jack O' Lanterns from Ghostly. One of them was the original candy holder that arrived broken earlier this year. Luckily, a little super glue saved the day – so now we have two!
Of course, no Halloween celebration would be complete without candy. I think we may have gone a bit overboard this year. As of the time I published this post, all the candy was gone. I honestly don’t know how we’ve avoided diabetes, but we somehow managed. Also, I do want to point out that Argentina's selection of Halloween candies has improved significantly since our arrival twelve years ago.
Now, if you’ve seen our Halloween celebrations in past years, you know we go all out when it comes to food and treats. Although we were on a tighter budget this year, we still managed to make some pretty tasty things. And, yes, we bought a couple of ready-made items too. Don't worry – I'll tell you which ones!
So, here are our homemade Halloween-themed peanut butter cups in the shape of Jack O' Lanterns and Witch hats.
Our second item was technically our first as the hubs arranged his homemade pancakes and donuts into this adorable monster face for breakfast.
Then the hubs made his famous dirt pudding. All he needed were some crushed Oreo cookies, some homemade pudding, some gummy worms, and an empty Starbucks cup.
And for all you health nuts out there, the hubs gave these cucumber slices a spooky makeover. He carved the eyes and mouth using a straw.
This is actually a homemade coconut cake. We used food coloring to turn the icing orange. Then we used chocolate chips to make the eyes and mouth for this Jack O' Lantern cake.
Graveyard Brownies, anyone? The tombstones were made out of coconut cookies, while the Umbrella Corporation shed was made out of Kit Kat bars. The shovel, zombie human and dog added a nice touch to this tasty dessert.
Again, for those of you who prefer healthier snacks on Halloween, we cut a few bananas, used chocolate chips to give them spooky eyes and then surrounded them with orange slices.
Full disclosure! The following items I'm about to share were either bought or we bought but modified with food coloring.
Alfajores are super popular here in Argentina—they’re basically two soft, crumbly cookies with dulce de leche (kind of like caramel) in the middle. A lot of them are covered in chocolate or dusted with powdered sugar, and there are all kinds of varieties.
Luckily, these two alfajores were covered in white icing, which gave us the perfect canvas to add some spooky features using a food coloring pen.
These donuts are actually from a pizza place called Bravucona, which offer donuts filled with Bavarian cream or jelly. They also come with eyes and a mouth. But as you can see, we gave one a vampiric makeover in the first photo and made the eyes in the second photo a little more pronounced.
These truffles were from a store called Rapanui and they came with these spooky designs beforehand, but they looked great on our coffin plate from Ghostly.
Another annual Halloween tradition at our house is watching a horror movie every day throughout October. So, here’s our 2024 list. Some of the films were classics, while others were brand new and surprisingly good. But, of course, there were some real duds too.
Halloween 2024 Movie List
- Strange Darling -- It was watchable
- Last Straw -- It was watchable
- AfrAId -- It was watchable
- Wrong Turn 2 Dead End - Bad, Bad, Bad
- Hold Your Breath - -- It was watchable
- The Crow - Waste of time
- Azrael -- It was watchable
- Beetlejuice 2 - Bad, Bad, Bad
- Hellboy The Crooked Man -- It was watchable
- Never Let Go -- It was watchable
- Resident Evil - A great classic!
- Scream - A great classic!
- Mr. Crocket - Decent but quickly forgettable
- Terrifier 3 - Decent
- Alien Romulus
- Stream - It was okay.
- Bagman - Disappointing.
- The Substance - It was okay
- False Positive - Meh
- Super Deep - Meh
- Smile 2 - Worst film of 2024
- Carved- A surprise hit
- A Nightmare on Elm Street - The original not the remake - Another great classic!
- The Hills Have Eyes 2 - Unrated - Sweet!
- Joy Ride 3 - Decent but not as good as the first one
- Don't Move - It was watchable
- Outside - A total disaster of a zombie movie
- Dawn of the Dead
- The Faculty
- 28 Days Later
- The Others
- Time Cut - New and watchable, but easily forgettable
- Train to Busan
- Bonus - Final Destination in honor of Tony Todd. We watched this on November 9th after learning of his passing.
It's worth mentioning that the day before Halloween was my husband's 42nd birthday. Naturally, we focused more on his birthday celebration – we wanted the attention to be on him, not Halloween.
Thankfully, our dear friend Melisa joined us to celebrate. Though she couldn’t be with us on Halloween itself, we helped her get into the spirit a day early by carving Jack O' Lanterns out of peppers.
It’s not the first time we’ve done this. The truth is, finding a good pumpkin to carve at the supermarket isn’t always easy, so we decided to carve peppers instead.
We filled them with rice and cheese, then baked them for about 20 minutes. They were absolutely delicious! I might add some red sauce next year to take them up a notch.
In addition to stuffed peppers, pizza, potato balls and cake, we also made my husband's favorite non-alcoholic drink, which is a Shirley Temple.
Now, I'm more of a fan of alcohol than he is, so we also made alcohol-laced Jell-O and placed them in these skull shot cups.
Afterward, we had some fun taking photos in a collection of masks we've gathered over the years. I’m thinking of investing in more accessories next year so we can dress up in full-body costumes.
Speaking of costumes...
24 hours after my husband’s birthday, we decided to dress up as our own versions of Ghostface from Scream, the Terminator, and V from V for Vendetta. We snapped a couple of photos, but by this point, we were pretty exhausted.
Now, we're already thinking about next Halloween. Of course, those plans will have to wait as we prepare for Thanksgiving, which is only two weeks away. But we're a little worried because we haven’t been able to find any turkeys at the supermarket. It's not very popular in Argentina. In fact, last year we had chicken, but this year, I’m really hoping to cook a turkey.
I’ll keep you posted on whether I have any luck finding one!
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