A Good Scottish Name: Anglo-American Halloween Celebration

As I have mentioned before, Halloween is not as much of an event in the UK as it is in the US, although traditions we know as Americans, such as trick-or-treating, are increasing here in England. We probably had only about a dozen trick or treaters in our neighborhood, and I thought that was quite light, given that we are in a pretty family-friendly area.

Since this was Crosby's first Halloween, I thought it would be nice to have a little party with her British baby friends and their parents so we could celebrate the holiday in more of an American style!

Crosby trying out her first Halloween costume, a cute little duckie!

The Saturday before Halloween, we hosted about 15 people at the house for an early Halloween pizza dinner. Since our guests were all British friends, I decided it would be fun to introduce them to Chicago deep dish pizza and American Halloween candy, both of which none of them had ever consumed before.

I brought back a few decorations from the US on my last trip there and decorated the house with some festive things.

I was a busy baker before the party, making both chocolate "ghost" cupcakes and vanilla "jack-o-latern" cupcakes.

The table was set with the food spread including: caramel peanut apple dip, hummus & veggies, cheese & crackers, deep dish Chicago pizzas, parmesan pizza bites for the babies, frosted sugar cookies, and chocolate & vanilla cupcakes - everything homemade from scratch of course! The center of the table had lots of American candy for our guests to enjoy and take home in their goodie bags : tootsie rolls, nerds, sweet tarts, Ghost tootsie roll pops, reeses pieces, candy corn, marshmallow pumpkins, laffy taffy, and sixlets.

The sausage, veggie, and sausage & mushroom deep dish Chicago-style pizzas. They were a hit with the guests!

We tried to capture a photo of all of the babies in costume in one sitting on the couch. It was nearly impossible to do! For some reason, Crosby was not a happy camper during this photo shoot and as soon as she started crying, the others followed suit.

Then on Sunday, we attended a Halloween party, this time with the American Club in our area. Although Crosby was probably a bit too young for the activities at this event, it was nice to celebrate the occasion with our American friends.