Halloween Playdate

We hosted the playdate for our PTA group this week at the house.  We asked that everyone come dressed up in costume or at least in a Halloween shirt so that we could get pictures.  Additionally, I was chosen to host an Earth's Best Playdate Party so we had great goodies from them to hand out as our treats!

This was the largest playgroup to date.  There were 12 moms/dad plus babies.  We ended up moving the party upstairs to the game room to have enough room to spread out and play.  It was a great time.

I made 2 different types of muffins for the adults: Cinnamon Streusal and Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins.  Both were a hit, but the Pumpkin Cheesecake ones especially. I wanted to make stuff that I could whip up before everyone arrived at 9:30 am.   I had planned on making Pumpkin bread and bought a box mix for it when I saw the muffin recipe on the side of the box.  I had everything on hand so I made them instead.  It was a good call since they were delicious and everyone raved about them.

Grace wants to thank Aunt Heather for her Ladybug costume.  She looked so cute in it and never once in the 2 hrs she had the costume on did she bother with the hood on it.

Earth's Best Goody Bag contents - coupons, rice cereal sample, halloween bowl, spoon,

jar of Earth's Best baby food and bib.

All of the goody bags

Muffins and Apples

Grace modeling the bib

Baby way of making friends. 

Cute as a bug

There were some really cute, creative costumes. Kiet as BamBam

Kai as a Chick-fil-a Cow - Kelli made the sign. 

Taking a picture of babies is kind of like herding cats

Just taking the whole group in.

This was about as good as it gets with the group photo. 

And we are missing one baby who refused to be in the picture.

After the group left, we both ended up taking naps and then I began making dinner for the night.  Brad and Krystal were coming over to watch the Rangers first game of the World Series.  I made the Pioneer Woman Lasagna.  Best Ever seems like a big exaggeration.  The reviews are glowing, but I just thought that it was ok.   I've made kind of a quick and dirty lasgna with no cook noodles,  spaghetti sauce, and quick bechamel that I thought had more flavor than this.  I did make a couple substitutions such as using ricotta instead of cottage cheese and mild sausage versus hot and I used better brand of tomatoes, but I doubt those made that much difference.  I just felt like it was a bit bland.  It lacked the sweet bite of tomato I think.  Not sure at this point if I'll try it again.  Maybe I had just way too high of expectations with this recipe since everyone else seemed to like it.

Busy but fun day!