The sun is coming up over the mountains in east Tennessee on this soon-to-be beautiful November 1. I’m stretching my toes, thinking about brewing some coffee and getting my game face on, for November 1st is potentially even more important than October 31st: day after Halloween sales! A day when the hardest of the hardcore request PTO from work to linger in the parking lot minutes before the speciality stores open their doors. Hard work pays off when you bring home a treasure trove of goodies, pack (some of) them away and feel like Christmas the following year when you open all of your new Halloween goodies.

With that said, I hope everyone had a great Halloween. If you have kids, I hope you took them trick-or-treating (to people’s houses – not fellow church member’s car trunks in the parking lot, or at least in addition to), and if you do not have kids, then congratulations on either waiting, being too young, or seeing through the BS of parenthood. Our decorations didn’t come out this year because I didn’t have time to put together what I wanted, and I’d rather just not decorate than do the same thing two years in a row. Too hard on myself? Potentially, but I want our house to be memorable and somehow mean something to one of the kids that come by, possibly even making them want to celebrate Halloween as adults, too.

Seems I also got a little heated when accused of celebrating “Satan’s Holiday.” Personally, I think it should be considered child abuse if you don’t allow your kid to celebrate Halloween and go trick-or-treating. I have no children, though, so my parenting advice is ill at best.

So we relaxed a while last night, watched Happy Birthday To Me and got down on my wife’s famous annual Halloween dinner. This year’s theme of choice, apparently, was this great pack of wontons we picked up from the Asian market a while back. For first-time recipes, she knocked out some tasty crab rangoon, surprisingly delicious chipotle chicken cups and a just-right-not-too-sweet cannoli. As per my request, she remade my yearly favorite (and Halloween dinner veteran) “Mummies” – or pigs in blankets – or wieners in crescent rolls – or totally awesome, however you’d like to refer to them.

While I helped with some of the preparation, all credit goes to my lovely on another stupendously tasty Halloween dinner!

http://instagram.com/p/RfF62AL2cd/

I pity you if you’re at work today – I also pity our storage areas. We’ll probably have to get rid of some Christmas stuff soon :-)