Dead Man's Party
At the Old Holland Place


It seems like there are NEVER enough parties during the Halloween season (if any at all!), so we took it upon ourselves to throw a bash at our house. We invited all of our neighbors and friends. Tip for house-party-throwers: It's ALWAYS a good idea to invite the neighborhood to your parties, so that they know to expect the noise and loud music, and don't complain about it.
We had about 15 of our friends show up, and the couple across the street showed up with their kid. The poor kid was the only little person at the party! That could've been a sad situation for the kid, but I planned ahead. We hid mini pumpkins all around the yard and gave a prize for finding the most. So he spent the whole night wandering through the yard with his flashlight, searching for pumpkins. It was pretty cute until he threw a tantrum because he couldn't find all of them. Oh well, the pumpkin hunt was a success, where otherwise I probably would've subjected the poor kid to serious psychological trauma by placing him in front of the TV with a scary movie to watch. I can just imagine it: "Alright! Which movie do you want to watch? The Shining or Nightmare on Elm Street?"

Almost everyone had a costume and we all looked great! I stood on a hay bale to make the announcement of the costume contest winners, just as a couple appeared from around the side of the house to check out the party. They didn't have costumes on, and I had no idea who they were. They were probably planning on just crashing the party, but they took one look around at all of us in our costumes (and it just happened to be a silent moment because I was about to make the announcement), and they turned on their heals and left. It was funny. I guess it's not easy to crash a costume party without a costume.

I was dressed as a gypsy for the party, so I entertained people with divination games. I bought an old deck of tarot cards from an antique store and tried to give a readings with them, but it was silly because I didn't know how to do it without reading the manual that came with the cards and it took too long, so I only did a couple tarot readings.
I also hosted a divination game called Puicini. It sounds Italian to me, but Wikipedia says it's a traditional Irish game so, whatever. Puicini is a game played at Halloween where there are four saucers (we used cups) filled with items that each symbolize something different. A person is blindfolded and they chose one of the saucers by placing their hand in it and whatever they chose determines what is in store for them in the coming year. One saucer contains water, which means they will travel. One saucer contains beans, which mean they will have money troubles (poverty). One saucers contains coins, which means they will come into new money (cha-ching!). And the final saucer contains earth, which means that someone close to them will die (oh no!). Most of us chose the beans (boooo!) or the water (myself included), one lucky person chose the coins, and two people chose the earth. I felt bad when they picked the earth, but we all took it with a grain of salt, and they didn't let it put a damper on their party spirits. :o)

Here are some photos from our party. There are three slideshows and hopefully they load: