Anatomy of a Halloween Party
October 28, 2006 at 10:05 Two weeks ago:
Plan Halloween party for all preschool children in the neighborhood. Lovely to share American customs and extend hospitality. Preschool parties are easy. Will chat with neighbors while children play. No pressure. Keep it simple.
Invitations are created, printed, and delivered by A and E-Grrrl to seven children under five in our neighborhood.
We’ll have game stations: a ball toss into a pumpkin basket, a bowling game, a game with Nerf guns, and two craft areas. Fun, fun, fun.
Day after invitations go out:
Party is a bad idea! Belgians don’t really celebrate Halloween.
Do any of my neighbors object to Halloween for religious reasons? Do they consider it another over-the-top commercialized expression of American excess and consumerism?
I’m being a bad global citizen, a stereotypical American trying to colonialize someone else’s native culture with bizarre American rituals. Oh no!
One and half weeks ago:
No one has responded to the invitations. Everyone hates us. It’s George Bush’s fault. People think we are rude, boorish people and horrible pagans. They do not want to expose their children to our evil ways
One week ago:
Must start getting things in order for party, even though I have only heard from only one family.
Drop $30 on streamers, cups, plates, napkins, goody bags, Russel Stover’s holiday candy, a Halloween coloring book, and a disposable tablecloth. Come home and go to put items away. Realize I already owned at least half of what I bought. Oops. Who knew? How American.
Have not researched Halloween snacks in detail, so while I’m at the military commissary, I stock up on typical ingredients recipes for kids: pretzel sticks, marshamallows, chocolate chips, Ritz crackers.
Will keep things simple for the adults, and just make a pumpkin spice cake and serve hot apple cider.
Six days ago:
Hear back from another family. Good, there will be three children there.
Start cleaning house. Pick up all kids' junk, straighten up book shelves, clear off dining room table. Things are already looking better!
Decide to taste just one Hershey caramel kiss. Oh my. These are really good.
Research Halloween snacks online, looking for ones that aren’t scary or disgusting so I don’t offend my neighbors or frighten their children. E-Grrrl helps choose recipes.
Three days ago:
Have heard from all invitees. Everyone is coming!
Dust and polish all furniture. Feeling serene and satisfied. On my way to lovely party for neighbors. Congratulate self on being good global citizen.
Two days ago:
Make homemade playdough to put at my party craft station. Immediately realize that anything that requires cooking flour and water in a pan on the stove is going to be very messy.
Playdough comes out perfect. Pan is DOA.
Clean and polish kitchen cabinet doors.
Am proud of myself for spreading the party preparation work out over several days. No stress!
Eat last Hershey caramel kiss in the bag. I am a bad, bad woman.
Yesterday morning:
Eliminate tower of papers and kid stuff on desk. Takes hours to discard, file, and put things away. Desk top looks attractive and professional, but perhaps I should have been cleaning the bathrooms instead? And washing the windows? And vacuuming?
Flemish have reputation for cleanliness that is exceeded only by the uber organized Germans. House is not clean enough! Consider scrubbing grout between floor tiles with toothbrush. Worry that my house smells weird. Go on cobweb patrol. Nothing is as it should be.
Resigned that I’ll disgrace my country by my slovenliness.
Yesterday afternoon:
Dash off shopping list to E. Need Nutter Butters, Diet Pepsi, Caramels, M & Ms, more pretzels, more chips, string licorice, white frosting, rubberbands, bread, milk, cheese!
They are out of white frosting in the American shop. I was going to use it to frost the Nutter Butters and use chocolate chips to create eyes on them and thus turn them into ghost cookies. Damn. Oh well, will make frosting from scratch tomorrow.
Realize son does not have costume. Must find one.
Last night:
Go to Belgian discount store. Limited Halloween items have been sold at 50 percent already and the aisle has been overtaken by Christmas decorations. This is un-American—you never discount the Halloween stuff until the day after it's over! Another cultural slap in the face. Though at least they have the Christmas stuff out--they're catching on to our commerical U.S. ways.
Go to toy aisle and buy son toy pistol, badge, and holster so he can be a cowboy.
Get home, think OMG, my son is dressing as a cowboy! Not the image I want to project—it’s so BUSH, so Republican, so violent, so macho. No, no, no!
Wish I had not talked my lil’ gunslinger out of a knight costume but was afraid he’d whack some kid with the big plastic sword and be considered violent and aggressive. Consider the merits of knights vs. cowboys. Who is better?
Decide I love the American cowboy best—better clothes and a better period in history. No crusades and killing and torturing in God's name. Go cowboys!
After the kids go to bed last night:
Must start baking and getting things ready. Was just going to make the pumpkin bundt cake for the adults but suddenly have flashback to major spread put out by neighbor during her housewarming. Can do better. Must do better!
Cake and coffee are not enough! Must have savory food too! Toast pecans and make pecan-cranberry cream cheese spread to serve on crackers, then wonder whether making it 36 hours before the party is wise. Will it have a disgusting slimey texture on Sunday? If it does, can I pretend it's a Halloween recipe and is supposed to be gross?
Decide to forego making cupcakes from scratch and instead bake brownie mix in cupcake holders. Easy! Will frost them tomorrow. Brownie mix fills more than one muffin tray and must be baked in separate batches. At 10:30 pm, they’re still cooling.
Decide to mix dry ingredients for pumpkin cake the night before to get a head start on next day’s baking. So smart! Kids can frost Nutter Butters in morning and all will be well. Will relax in the afternoon and enjoy my Saturday.
Saturday morning:
Get up just after 7 a.m. Wander downstairs in my bathrobe. Go into basement to find bundt pan. Get ready to start cake. Realize bowl I need to use is in dishwasher. Dishwasher will run for 2 hours and 48 minutes. Sigh.
Clean open shelves in kitchen while waiting. Scrub and remove all hardwater deposits from sink. Clean dish drainer. Attack bathroom sink with boiling vinegar and a scraper to remove calc deposits from around faucet and drain.
Miss daughter’s final soccer game—the one where she scored her first goal. Sigh.
Still in PJs and robe, begin making bundt cake.Must alternate additions of flour and eggs and put a streusel swirl in the center. Tell self: this will be delicious, a wonderful cake with some pizzazz. Other part of brain says: This is a big pain in the ass.
While cake is baking, make a sour cream, Tex-Mex flavored dip for adults. Think: is this too spicy? Do Belgians eat spicy food? Husband and Belgian mother-in-law do NOT like spicy food. Sigh.
Well, too damn bad. V-Grrrl lurves her spicy food. You don’t like it, you can kiss my saucy ass.
Kids turn Tootsie pops into ghost pops. E-Grrrl washes windows. Mr A cleans hamster cage. E-Grrrl goes through a huge bag of M & Ms and removes all the orange, yellow, and brown ones for a recipe. Mr. A is determined to eat the red, green, and blue ones.
Cake is done! Looks perfect! Must make frosting and frost Nutter Butters and make them into ghosts.
Realize as frosting Nutter Butters that I need to send cookies to Embassy Halloween party this afternoon. Do I have enough for our party and theirs? Lots of counting on fingers and calculating of average cookie consumption.
Run out of frosting before I finish doing all the Nutter Butters. Decide to send half ghost cookies and half plain Nutter Butters to Embassy party. Package neatly in box.
Oops. Don’t have enough powdered sugar now to glaze cake or frost cupcakes. Send E into the Dutch baking aisle at local store to find powdered sugar. No, Honey, superfine sugar is not the same thing!
E finds powdered sugar (though it comes in little cans, not big honking boxes). Brings many cans of powdered sugar home. Takes children to Halloween party. Forgets box of cookies.
1:30 pm. Still in bathrobe, I glaze cake and start on popcorn balls. Realize recipe printed from online site lacks details—what size bag of caramels? How many M & Ms? What size can of roasted peanuts? Feeling bold and confident, I wing it, guessing at quantities and throwing stuff into a big pot.
Good Lord—what a mess! How sticky is this? I can’t stir it! My M & Ms are cracking! The peanuts are all falling to the bottom! Wax paper. Must have wax paper. Must grease hands. Must hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! It's starting to set.
Popcorn balls formed. Good!
No, bad! Bad popcorn balls. Imagine them in little sticky pieces all over floor and rugs as preschoolers try to eat them. What the hell was I thinking?
2:30 p.m. Cannot stand up another minute. Must escape kitchen. Must still frost and decorate cupcakes and make tea sandwiches. I am making WAY too much food. Am Italian—cannot stop myself.
Skinny, petite bikini-wearing neighbors and fussy toddlers will never consume this much food. V-Grrrl will eat leftovers and make her new jeans groan at the seams.
I’m going to blog the party prep, just so I can sit in a chair for an hour.
3:30 p.m. Must return to kitchen of dirty pans and sticky surfaces and finish cooking. Must get E to do floors and finish bathroom. Still need to decorate and hang streamers and set up games and make goody bags and, and, and....
Hear the sofa call my name. Must not answer….
October 28, 2006
Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com
Reader Comments (15)
I so identify with this scenario, although in my case it was never a party for kids. But doing the American recipes, and not finding the same ingredients, and the ones you find are in tiny amounts and cost a fortune, and just one simple cake, which would have been a Duncan Hines slam dunk in the States, turns out to be a major culinary coup as you scrounge around looking for icing sugar, and find some weird imported "castor sugar" from the U.K., and wonder if that is the right thing, but you can't see inside the packet and you can't rip it open in the store. And then you need some wax paper to line the cake pans, but nobody even knows what wax paper is, or you don't know how to say it in their language, so you rip out the lining of cereal boxes and hope that will do!
I speak of many years ago when I first went to Spain, and some of this stuff is now available, but when it wasn't...well, that was the beginning of "When in Rome... " After several years I worked out a nice compromise of making local dishes and American stuff, but not before I went through a lot of cereal boxes, ha, ha!
I always have to buy Halloween candy twice, the first bag I open "just to taste one", and of course it is gone a few days later. I then wisely wait until the afternoon of Halloween to buy the second bag.
Thank you for taking so seriously your responsibility to project a "good" American image.
Very funny post.
I hope everyone had tons of fun! I bet the kids will love it.
:)
Hosting parties is so hectic and energy draining, your post is sooooooooo identifiable for anyone who has played the role of host. Excellent post, simply excellent.
Hope you'll treat us to the "during the party & the aftermath of the party" sequels. (This could trigger off a trilogy attribute of your blog, making you the JRR Tolkien of the blogosphere).
:-)
Thanks :)
I found your blog at Neil's blog. Where are you in Belgium? I went to graduate school at KULeuven, so I love reading about your experiences there. I hope the party went well.
hope the kids had fun