Divine Fudge: Eat, Drink, and be Scary!

Celebration is contagious!

One of my great new adventures this year is finding my new friend Robyn, a passionate, joyful, woman I met through her entertaining blog. She loves her life as a full-time mom and shares it prolifically in What's Cookin'.

Today, Robyn is all excited about Halloween! Here is what she tells me in my morning email:

I've been busy painting my Halloween mural, I've got the progress up on my blog.

We're having three parties this month, each of the kids are having a halloween party and we have a neighborhood costume party too. It's so much fun, but--alas--a lot of work & details! But you know I don't mind & I'm making some fun party food.

I make a double cheese log recipe, but shape it into a mummy. Then I use a pastry bag to pipe cream cheese strips all over him like mummy bandages. Ripe olive eyes and a cheese knife in the chest and he's ready.

I also grow loads of jalapenos so I make Bacon Wrapped Ghosts in Coffins--just a half jalapeno, filled with a mix of cream cheese and jack cheese and wrapped with a half slice of bacon. I bake those and they're always the first thing gone.

For the kid's punch and our Sangria, I fill a food service glove with Hawaiian punch and freeze it. Peel off the glove and it floats in the punch like...well...like a severed hand.

As it melts the fingers fall off and that's always a big hit!!

So, it stands to reason that October is one of my favorite months doesn't it? Fun fun fun.

Robyn, her husband Tom and their kids get all their neighbors involved in painting an annual mural on their fence. Please follow this link to Robyn's blog to see it, and for even more ideas!

As for our own Halloween this year, Ted and I are getting in the "spirit" in Italy. Yes, they do celebrate Halloween in Italy, and its popularity is growing every year. (This morning while having breakfast aboard the Celebrity Solstice we are cruising past the rather ominous island of Stromboli billowing plumes of smoke from its crater into the sunrise.)

I may even find a new hat here to take home for my collection!

Here I am two years ago with two of my granddaughters, Aidan and Caitlin. I bought the purple witch hat on St. Mark's Square in Venice. Last year I wore my new "good witch" hat bedecked with a wise old owl.