Happy Halloween!

Happy (belated) Halloween!  We've been getting settled back into life on Okinawa after a great trip Stateside and I'm working on getting our website back up to speed again.  I didn't want to let a cookie-holiday go by without a post, so I'll do our Halloween activities now and then play catch-up.

You know us, what would Halloween be without Star Wars Monsters?!  At first I was totally creeped out by these bobble-heads, but the little guys start to grow on you after a while.

After all, who can resist a zombified Stormtrooper or Franken-Vader?

That's what I thought.  Our apartment was also filled with the wonderful smell of cookies!

I'm really enjoying the gourmet food decorating marker that I purchased from Karen's Cookies.  It made the ghost's eyes, as well as the "R.I.P." and crack on the tombstone, really easy!  I have all sorts of ideas on how to use it for other upcoming cookie endeavors! I'm also in love with their soft gel paste food coloring - true black (and one that actually dried) on the first attempt!  I'm looking forward to trying out the other colors they offer, too!

I purchased cellophane bags and silver twist ties at the 100-Yen to make cookie packages to give out at work.  Wanted to see how they turned out, as I have ideas for Christmas baskets.  The small bags I purchased were perfect for one cookie a piece, and the larger bags fit two cookies quite nicely.

After finishing up the piping details on the cookies yesterday afternoon, we met Megumi and Roger in American Village to watch the Annual Costume Parade and Contest.  There were over 200 people entered into the costume contest this year!  We saw a very unique take on Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf:

A very impressive mummy:

There were, of course, costumes that we couldn't identify, but looked well-thought out:

(By the way, the little cheetah-ish girl was part of a dance troop of five who did back walkovers across the stage.  Still not positive what they were supposed to be, but they were impressive!)

Loved the paper-mache pumpkin!

There was a harem of girls with an elephant:

A young boy dressed up as an anime character from Dragon Ball Z with matching costume for his dog:

A cowboy hat-wearing Jedi:

The creepy girl from the movie, The Ring, and her faithful attendants carrying her water well (fairly certain there weren't attendants in the movie, but we gave her two thumbs up for extra prop use):

An extremely impressive home-made Mike from Monsters, Inc.:

And yes, indeed, that is a Predator behind Mike!

An impressive, homemade, Power Ranger-esque guy who loved to interact with the audience:

And my favorite, the Wheaties guy!

Again, another total crowd-pleaser!

By this time, all of us were tired of the crowd and hungry for some delicious Mango Chicken Curry, so we headed over to Bollywood Dreams well before the end of the parade.  On the way over, we did get this great photo of another Predator. 

Funny how the fear factor of Predator can't quite withstand the giggly goodness of two Japanese teen girls!  :)

And that was our second Halloween on Okinawa!  We hope you all had a safe and happy holiday!

---Arielle