Harvest Party!

I have been wanting a harvest festival birthday party for three years, and this was the first year we got organized enough to make it happen. I had a super birthday. Rick brought me mums - a tradition we had back in Michigan (filling the porch with mums each fall). Rick and Moo cooked me breakfast pancakes. And then we had a bunch of great friends over for a harvest party. We had11 kids including one 4 month old! He bowed out on the games in favor of napping in a nice quiet dark bedroom. The kids' rooms got sacked, and we sent home all the kids with major sugar-highs. Sadly, I was not the greatest photographer, so just try to imagine much of the mayhem in our home.

For the overly curious grandmotherly types....

Our decor: 

 

Our menu:

Caramel apple dip + apple slices from a friend

Turkey chili served over spaghetti w/toppings: green pepper, onion, corn, cheese

Cornbread

Pea salad (cold peas with mayo/sour cream dressing, onions, etc.)

Rick's jello - so re-named by some family friends who were overly impressed (stupefied) by his copious helpings of the jello they made for a dinner we attended at their house

Our order of activities:

Foam pumpkin decorating thanks to my summer stop at the Target dollar spot!

Eating donuts off a string

(a side activity was dunking the extra donuts in butter 

and coating with powdered or cinnamon sugar)

Bobbing for apples

Dinner

Dessert: Cupcake decorating (pumpkin flavor with cream cheese frosting!)

 & an eclair dessert brought by a friend

The day before: 

Moo tasting the donut batter to make sure it was safe for others

Lu trying on her fairy princess costume....only to later have Moo steal her wings and fly around the house like a super-hero fairy-king. She was unphased.

The day after: 

We all cleaned and collapsed.

Three days after: 

I'm wondering what to do with all that extra cream-cheese frosting. Eat it? Save it somehow? Invent some other kind of dessert that can use it? Eat it.