spooooky socialization

Ben & I threw our first real party last night!

Success :)

With Halloween falling on the Sabbath, we kept it pretty chill. The invitations called for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, boo-nilla shakes, and spooooky socialization. We invited 22 of our closest friends and the turn-out? Amazing! All but one came! Our not-overly-spacious kitchen and living room were packed!

The biggest hit was our boo-nilla shakes. To make, you melt chocolate chips and paint ghost faces on the insides of glasses with a small paintbrush. Then you fill it with (white) vanilla shake and it becomes a ghost!

Don't you just love the pumpkins? They were our only Halloween decoration this year, but I've grown rather fond of them. This was our food table - lots of cookies, bowls of candy, and the big bowl was for candy that guests brought for "communal trick-or-treating!" Haha!

This is one of my dearest, dearest friends Joanna. She picked the "boo face" that Ben thought was a bikini. He said if I drew a string all the way around the sides with a bow in the back it would have been perfect! Haha. We topped all of the shakes with whipped cream, orange and black sprinkles, and a straw for some extra-festiveness.

This is Sami and Blue, respectively, with their cute "boo faces!"

This is a couple I just adore - Sierra, who I've been rooming with since we lived next door to each other in the dorms, and Jeff, the boy she's been dating since their senior year of high school who recently returned from a mission in Switzerland! How lovely. ;) I totally didn't think Sierra would make the drive all the way down from Salt Lake, but she completely surprised me and I may or may have let out a small yelp when I saw her in the doorway! Yess! :)

Just a glimpse of our living room -

Ben manned the blender all night and was the ultimate shake-maker! He got lots of compliments on his shake consistency. Finally, we got to enjoy shakes of our own and he picked this cute guy.

When everyone left, Jo and Si (with their men) stayed for an extra hour and we laughed and laughed about old times living together. Think: troll-like hair do's for past Halloweens and getting pulled over by a cop, many nights of sissy girls wrestling, and Taylor, the latte boy. It was a blast. Love love love! :)

Other Halloween-weekend events included

- our ward party = so much fun! Who would have thought that a married-ward-with-lots-of-kids party would be wayyy more fun than a single's ward party? First, the little kids trick-or-treated to all of the classrooms, then we had doughnuts and hot chocolate while watching the kids parade their costumes across the stage, and then we played several games as a ward. We had SO much fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Yay!

- seeing Inception at the dollar theater. Have you seen it? It was so . . . well, I don't really know what happened. I don't even know if I liked it or not! Either way, it was great fun all the same.

Also, Ben had a great visit to the Ernst & Young office in San Fran last week (Perfect, with the Giant's wins and all!) and he is prepping for a trip to PwC in Manhattan this week! Wa-hoo!