A lot has been written about the 31st and all its ghoulish festivities, but what about the days after? In the Catholic faith, November 1 is All Saints' Day, and the day after is All Souls' Day.  All Souls' Day goes by many names throughout the world, but you might be most familiar with the Mexican version: Dia de los Muertos.

Far from being a spookfest, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a time for family and friends to gather together and remember loved ones who have passed.  Some people hold Sugar Skull Decorating Parties, and decorate the skulls in a manner befitting their loved ones (grandpa with his pipe, your great aunt with the blue hat she loved).  You can learn how to make sugar skulls at Adobo Grill in Old Town, buy them at most Mexican bakeries, or make them yourself.

Menus for these parties tend to be fairly traditional Mexican cuisine, but I can't imagine anyone would shun you for offering these goodies! (pictured above):

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

Beef tamales (ok, these are traditional...make them yourself or purchase at a Mexican grocery store)

Tres Añejo Macho
Rim the outside of a glass with lemon and dip into salt.  Add 1 part Tres Generaciones Añejo tequila (my new fave! It's dark and has hints of vanilla), 1 part mineral water, and 1 part lemon juice over ice.  Drop a dry chili into the glass for a spicy kick.

Hosting a Halloween party this weekend?  Want to do something fun for your guests other than a traditional costume contest?  How about Costume Voting, instead?

You will need
Open wall space
Poster Putty
White Cardstock (plain white paper works too, just not as well)
Black Cardstock
A pen with a clip
A Polaroid camera, or a digital camera and fast printer! (Polaroid is much, much easier and yes - it's coming back!)

Instructions

1) Using any word processing program, make ballots out of a half sheet of paper.  Make it theme appropriate with Halloween borders and a spooky font.  Print on white cardstock or paper.

2) Create an "example" like the one shown at left.  I found Pink Bunny Man on Flickr a while ago, but you can use any photo you'd like.  The sillier, the better.  Mount it on black cardstock so that it stands out.  Attach to the wall with putty, and clip the pen to it, as shown in the top photo.

3) Make a banner, as in top photo.  Again, you can use any word processing program...just make sure the font is nice and big!  Print on white, and temporarily mount onto back cardstock.  Cut a jagged border, then pull off the white layer, offset it from the black, and then permanently reattach to the black layer.  This gives you a nice shadow effect.

4) As your guests arrive, take their photo and attach it to a card.  Encourage them to create their own superlative awards for others.  As the host, be sure you vote for everyone to get the ball rolling.  At the end of the night, guests can take their card as a momento of the party!

Back in college, I spent a semester as an educational tour guide at Disney World.  The job was as cool as it sounds, and among the activities we did with the kids was going to the Haunted Mansion to discuss Victorian-era superstitions and beliefs, and to the Tower of Terror to examine set design.  I was always amazed at the amount of detail that the "Imagineers" put into the sets of both attractions.  A set of dusty spectacles on an yellowed open book here, a decomposing velvet tablecloth there...it was all very well thought out.

You can recreate some of that detail at your house without a Disney-sized budget.  Check out these Neglected Flowers. The effect is spooky yet sophisticated, and not at all cheesy (unlike so many Halloween decorations at the party stores).

Neglected Flowers How-to

You will need:

-A vase, preferably not in a modern style
-Dried flowers (I bought fresh pink sweetheart roses and purple statice, then let them dry out).  Select flowers with an old-fashioned look to them.  This is not a good project for Birds of Paradise!
-White floral spray, available at any craft store
-Fake spider webbing, available at any of those pop-up halloween stores
-Fake spider (optional, also found at the pop-up stores)

1) Cover your work area with newspaper.  Spread out the flowers and gently spray them with the white floral spray.  The goal is to make them look old and dusty...you still want some of the color to come through so don't paint them completely!  You might have to do several passes with the paint until you get the look you want.

2) Once the paint has dried, arrange flowers in the vase.

3) Take a SMALL amount of the spider webbing and pull apart until it's very gauze-like and resembles a cobweb.  Spread it around the arrangement, in various parts.  You don't want it to be too consistent.

4) Add spider, or not.

Voila! Halloween decorations, sans cheese!

Candy Corn seems to be somewhat polarizing - people either love it or hate it.  Oh, I'm sure there are some who are ambivalent about this classic Halloween treat, but I for one love it!  If you're in my camp, take a look at these recipes paying homage to the sugary sweet.

1 Candy Corn Chocolate Cake from Southern Living

2 Candy Corn Gelatin from Martha Stewart

3 Candy Corn Pudding Parfaits from Hershey's Kitchens

4 Candy Corn Sugar Cookies from Martha Stewart

5 Candy Corn Parfait by Food Network (slightly healthy...it's got fruit!)  ;)

6 Vegan Candy Corn by Urban Housewife

7 Trick-or-Tini from YumSugar (you may wish to give this a stir before drinking, but after presenting!)

As you probaby guessed from my Neglected Flowers post, I'm picky about my Halloween decorations.  So much of it skews cartoonish...that was fine when I was 6, but isn't really my taste these days.  If you agree, you might like the spooky yet chic black and white decor on Better Homes and Gardens' site.  Perfect for some adult-appropriate Halloween decor!

Chic pumpkins and more at bhg.com

These are sort of fun.  Pottery Barn is selling labels (which, ok, you could probably make yourself but maybe you don't want to) for misleading your guests on Halloween.  That is, unless you're actually serving eye of newt, in which case, gee...my invitation must've gotten lost in the mail!

Apothecary Labels, $19 for set of 6

Want to print your own?  Martha Stewart has some "Dreadful Candy Jar Labels" for the DIY types!

So it’s getting to be Halloween crunch time with less than a week togo before the big day. As much as I personally love Halloween, I mustadmit that I wait until the last two  weeks or so to complete myoutfit nearly every year.

You can’t walk a block these days without hitting one of thosestorefront Halloween shops taking up residence lately. And whilethat’s certainly a best bit if you are look for a specific kind ofpre-made costume like a Kate Gosslein wig or a Barack Obama mask. Butif you tend to lean DIY in your Halloween costume approach, like I dothere are a few great places to pick up Halloween costume essentialsfor cheap.While one would think that the Belmont Army Surplus, 855 W. Belmont, would be ideal for Halloween shopping (and indeed, the 3 and 4th floors have a decent selection of resale/vintage dresses, suits and pants and actual army stuff) I was shocked at just how pricey many of their offerings were (at least for resale stuff, we’re talking $15 -$20 for a decent dress) and the selection was definitely more functional than costume oriented.

I highly recommend heading up the street to the old standby of Halloween shopping, Ragstock, 812 W. Belmont, or check out the one in Wicker Park, 1433 N. Milwaukee. These folks understand potential income generating opportunities and it seems they go out of their way to stock up for the season with tons of great accessories, wigs, sunglasses, fake fur coats, stockings and such for cheap. And most importantly, the selection is made for one-off Halloween fun: Kanye West shades, pink wigs and the like. I feel like even the most off-the-wall costume shoppers will find what they are looking for here.

If you’re at the Belmont Ragstock looking for a vintage costume and do want to invest a little more into your Halloween outfit, head downstairs to Hollywood Mirror, located in the same building. The prices for the quality vintage stuff is a little more, but if you are someone who likes that style then it’s totally worth it.

If you are looking for high quality wigs or fake eyelashes, for sure check out Beatnix, 3440 N. Halsted. It’s also a great costume stop, with reasonable prices. A few years ago I found an awesome '70s era jumpsuit there that scored me $50 at a costume party.

These are no-brainers when it comes to Halloween shopping in Chicago, but in my many years as a Chicago-based Halloween enthusiast, you really can’t go wrong with any of these places, even if you want till the 11th hour to put together a costume, these places won’t let you down.

Halloween certainly brings out the creative mixologist in a lot of people, including me.  What is it about this holiday that drives grown adults to concoct sticky sweet or grossly visual cocktails?  Some people think it's fun, others areabove that sort of thing.

I guess I'm somewhere between the two schools of thought.  So for the similarly indecisive, here are two cocktails for you to try...

Silly: Goblin Mimosas (from St Louis Entertains)

Pulp-free Orange Juice 
Black Vodka
Black olives 
Cream Cheese

Fill a glass halfway with OJ.  Pour black vodka over the back of a spoon so it runs down the side of the glass, rather than plunging into the juice and mixing right away.

For the "eyes" use pitted black olives stuffed with cream cheese. Cut up one olive into tiny little pieces, and use those pieces as the pupils. Pierce the completed eyes over wooden toothpicks and place on the rim of the glass.

...to be honest, I'm not sure what I think of the olive and OJ flavor combination.  I love both, but maybe not together.  Any thoughts on what else you could use?

Sophisticated: Satan's Whiskers (from thenibble.com)

This classic cocktail was first poured in the 1920s.  Apparently "Satan's Whiskers!" was a common expletive at the time. (As in,"Satan's Whiskers! I can't find the car's start crank!")

1½ shots gin
1 shot sweet vermouth      
1 shot fresh orange juice    
1 bar spoon of Cointreau or other orange liqueur
Dash of orange bitters

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a martini glass.  Garnish with an orange twist (the whisker).  If you have lychees, drop one on the bottom of the glass (Satan's eyeball)

...guessing the lychee was not in the 1920s version 

With October 31st falling on a Saturday this year, there are bound to be any number of fabulous costume parties to choose from. But what to wear? Ladies…let the hunt for the perfect Halloween costume begin!

Let’s see…once again…our options seem to be limited to the oh so popular “naughty nurse,” the frat-boy pleasing “sexy cop” or the time honored “slutty school girl.”

Yikes! What’s a classy girl to do?

“Just Say No to Ho” this Halloween! Please.

Chicagoan Jeff Semmerling creates masks that are beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art. From his Ravenswood studio, Semmerling begins the 12-14 step design process by custom molding a full or partial face plate from the finest leather. Next, each piece is embellished with spectacular feathers, jewels and/or custom beading.

Wouldn’t a mask like that be magnificent with a little black dress? Or, skinny jeans, boots and a turtle neck? Absolutely.

Semmerling’s masks range in price from $25 to $500 or more for custom couture works.

Jeff Semmerling’s studio is located at 2005 West Montrose in Chicago. Appointments are highly recommended. Phone the studio at 773/697-5012 or email the artist at jeff@maskartists.com.

More photos and info: http://tiny.cc/Photos65