Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween. Not a day I have gotten very excited over for, oh, the past 15+ years. But today isn't so bad: its Friday, its "Jeans Day" at work (to raise money for charity) and I baked and brought in cupcakes to the office - helping my fellow associates start off National Sugar Day on the right foot.

Bringing treats to work reminds me of having cupcakes in class for birthdays in elementary school; being so excited that after social studies at 3pm we'd get to deviate from the usual lesson plan for a "party". And its still true, even now fresh baked cupcakes liven up the workplace, at least a little bit. Today's confection are homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (dyed orange with black sprinkles and Reese's Pieces, naturally). I tried to make them just a tiny bit healthier. Still not quite "healthy" but maybe slightly less lethal; substituted apple sauce for some of the oil and Egg Beaters for the eggs in the cake and used Smart Balance instead of butter and low-fat cream cheese in the frosting. And actually the lighter, thinner consistency of the frosting suits the cake really well.

Mmm, cupcakes! Also, the cupcake carrier is one of my favorite inventions.

This evening, we'll pass out candy to trick-or-treaters (if there are any? not sure in our new neighborhood yet). Flutie will don his lobster costume, probably for a total of five minutes, if we're lucky. I'm usually against dressing up animals in clothes, but a goofy costume on Halloween has to be an exception. Why have a dog if you can't dress it up like a fool once a year for your own amusement? If I can get him to hold still (tenuous) I'll try to snap a picture and post it later. A friend of Dan's has a birthday today so we'll head over to their house later tonight for a party. It's a "wear a costume if you feel like it" kind of Halloween/Birthday shin dig. I had thought of dressing up as a "pit bull wearing lipstick" but didn't pull it together in time. I even trekked out to Michael's craft store last weekend and wasn't able to find anything helpful there, much to my surprise. So instead I will be boring and just dress in orange and black, thematic at least.

I'll manage to get genuinely excited about Halloween again once I have kids. But until then will just bake goodies, dress in black, hand out candy and maybe carve a pumpkin. No pumpkin this year, sadly. We don't use our car very often and its tough to lug home a huge pumpkin from the store half a mile or more on foot or the bus. Again, once there are wee ones in the picture I'll make an effort to go to a real pumpkin patch, but for now = lingering apathy. Hope everyone has a safe, fun and sugar-filled night.