Good morning, afternoon, or evening, Hivelanders. Hope the day is going well for you no matter what time zone you find yourself bound to. I have a busy day ahead of me. Minime is having a birthday party, and I am the party planning committee, caterer, cruise director, and cleaner. Though I will likely get some help from Grandma.

Currently, I am enjoying some coffee in a Jack Skellington cup and some more of that browned butter, this time shaped like a pumpkin. So Yummy. My mind is tumbling with recipe turns I may take with these delicious little bites of fatty brain food. Braiinnns. You can see where my mind is at. But first, I have to go shopping and prepare for the party. Wish I could time travel or time stretch. Is that t thing? I am desperate need of a nap too. Not sure I will be able to fit that in. More coffinee and braiin food hopefully will see me through to the finish line.

Okay, I am back from the past and pretty sure you are in the present. It is a whole ten hours later now. The party is all but wrapped up. Just a few stragglers left, watching the Nightmare Before Christmas. There is a strange synchronicity to things. It is almost as through there was a cue. The day began like any Autumn day, windy and rainy. Yellow sheaves slipping their way to the forest floor and onto I won't being mowing again to next May lawns. But as I write this, a light snow has begun to fall. Far from a blizzard and unlikely to stick, at least for long, but beautiful and festive all the same. Ice confetti to end the festivities. Thank you nature.

As you can see from the flicks, we had a Halloween theme to the day. Most of the pumpkins were in fact grown in my garden. We homeschool but our guest do not. The party began just after school. Good to give the fellow parents and evening off and feed the neighborhood bunnies. We eat a keto/carnivore diet, and so birthdays can be tricky with all the gluten and sugar that generally abounds when hooligans marking a milestone mash it up. I had potato chips and back up hotdogs if the menu turned off the folks used to Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen ice cream cakes. Turned out a back up was not needed.

I was a busy cavewoman around the hearth all day, making an almost carnivore cake and pizzas. My neolith diners did not seem to mind the lack of flour and sugar. The pizza was all but devoured with a massive amount of praise being heaped upon my stone-age efforts. Empty plates and second, third, and even fourth helpings are a cooks greatest compliment. It wasn't to the end, we discussed the chicken in the crust. Nobody seemed concerned.

For dessert, there was a chaffle cake with mixed berries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. It turns out a cross between a black forest cake and shortcake. I had to do some repair work just before serving, thanks to some smushing in the fridge, but once again there was no complaints and empty bowls. I didn't even need the back up ice cream, which I will now pass on to my sister and her family. Kids are the pickiest eaters and so a passing grade from them is an A plus from those more long in the tooth.

After cake, we went downstairs and played some Halloween games. There was the wrap the Mummy/Mommy race. We faced the ghost; an impossible game where you try to get a marshmallow from your forehead to your mouth without dropping ii on the floor. Not a future, flexi-face Jim Carrey among us. I thought fast and turned it into a relay race where we had to balance the marshmallow on our foreheads and walk like zombies. We then played wink witch doctor, a play on wink murder. You get a wink and you have to walk around, again like zombies. Even when you lose you win, because who doesn't want to walk around like zombies. Give the Id inside all of us free reign to be.

We came back up stairs and bobbed for apples, a la Charlie Brown, minus the beagle. I wasn't sure the kids would embrace this old-timey event, but they went full gusto and even ate their apples. No one can say there wasn't anything healthy. Some of them even wanted to do it again. The apples hoovered and/or baby-teethed speared, we went back downstairs, got out the glow sticks, and proceeded to have pint-size spooktacular rave. Here is the playlist we used if you are looking for Halloween themed music. Some of our guests had to leave, and so we used their last party moments to pop the balloons they had been dying to pop from the moment they had arrived.. Amazing how happy kids can be when you just let them make noise.

All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon and feel I may have scored a mummy win:)

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