Halloween Aussie Style

Down Under Halloween isn't celebrated as much as we Americans would. Most adults won't let kids go trick-or-treating, but houses wouldn't even have any 'lollies' to hand out anyway! Just to show those Aussies how fun Halloween can be we decided to throw a Par-tay!

It took about a week to set up the whole house and get everything just right. We didn't want to buy heaps of decorations, bcoz we wouldn't be able to take it back to the USA. So we had to be very creative. We had a back-drop of bats, orange and black streamers, cob webs EVERYWHERE, and best of all...the Haunted house, designed and created by yours truly.

It was a touchy-feely type of haunted house. There were creepy eyeballs (peeled grapes), guts (spagetti noodles), a Brain (cauliflower), blood (ketchup) and fingers (an actual hand). It took 4 people to run. A host (Kyle), a person to grab their legs (Patrick Abraham), a person to grab thir hand when they put it into the fingers box and of course, someone to jump out of the closet (me).

It was a HUGE hit and scared everyone...well mostly everyone. We had a riot outside our door chanting, "We want more, We want more!"

There were also many games to play including the cake walk, orange under the chin, Pinata, pumpkin carving contest and bobbing for apples. In the cake walk the kids won a cup cake but the adults had to slurp down a jello shot. For the orange under the chin game, it was kids aginst the adults, the team who passed the orange down the line using only their chins only were the winners. Now, I have a think here, which team would have won..... of course, THE KIDS!! People here don't carve pumpkins either, and I think I know why, those pumpkins are $20 each! Luckily we found a few for only $7 each. We bought 3, so there for there were 3 teams; the old kids (Kyle's age), the medium age (my age), and the lil munchkins (Jake's age). Well, of course, us middle agers won (wink wink!) Bobbing for apples was a bunch of fun, except you got absolutely SOAKED! It was nice and refreshing, though.

Aussies think that all Halloween costumes have to be scary. Virtually every woman came as a witch, men as a variety of scary creatures. But we Steens were creative, although for the first time EVER didn't go as a 'family theme', we all went our seperate ways. Mum was a belly dancer, who wore a yellow outfit, with blonde hair and a blonde wig. My dad was a complete nerd. He wore short pants, with long socks, a collared shirt with pens and a calculator in the pocket and the bottem stuck in his zipper, and don't forget the toilet paper out the butt and the 'kick me' sign on his back. It was hilarious and quite embarassing, actually. I don't think he got the hint that he was supposed to wear a costume, he just went as himself! Kyle was a terrifing mummy, Jake a tourist/photographer and I was Thing 2, My friend Emily Moore was Thing 1 (from The Cat in the Hat).

It was a blast and some of our mates say that they are going to throw a Halloween party next year, and think about us the whole way through it. Have a nice cold winter, while we are almost in Summer in Aussie!

Cheers Mate,

xoxo Mariah xoxo