This fall marked the 12th year in our annual tradition of throwing a Halloween costume party, but this year, for the first time, we had our party on Halloween night. 

Though we typically hold our party the weekend before Halloween, with the holiday falling on a Friday night (along with Alex's now crushed hopes and dreams of the Nationals making it into the World Series, which in theory would have tied up a few of the other weekend dates), we decided to hold out until the last day of the month to throw our annual bash. 

We're a few days behind in sharing the details, but this year's party was a spooktacularly good time. I guess when you combine friends, food, drinks, and some great costumes, it's really hard to go wrong. 

After last year's Orange is the New Black inspired costumes of ours, lots of people were curious what we would dress up as this year. I'm a fan of couples costumes, as they really add a lot of options for creativity in costumes, so that's the route we went again this year. We kicked around a lot of different thoughts on the subject and tried to figure out something that would be relevant and fun without breaking the bank. Alex had the idea to dress up as a Scotsman representing Scottish independence, but tethered to the Queen of England. He enjoys every opportunity to wear his kilt, and I liked that the idea was timely and relatively easy to pull off and gave me an opportunity to embrace my inner queen. He ordered a "Scotland Aye" tee shirt to round out his ensemble, and I combined costume jewelry and sensible shoes with a new wig and monochromatic ill fitting dress and jacket I picked up for just $25 at our local bargain shopping outlet. Here's a look at the full effect.

While Lulu was dressed as a little bat, we really should've gone the extra lengths and had her dress as a little corgi. Overall we got a pretty decent reaction from our party guests, and Alex got the question of "So, your kilt...are you full Scottish? (wink wink, nudge nudge)" more than once.

Our guests were incredibly creative this year. One of my favorite costumes included our friends with the movie theater-inspired group costume with the awesomely homemade popcorn costume, lovingly made by this little guy's grandma.

As well as our friends who came to the party already buzzed. (Terrible joke, my apologies.) Seriously though, any man who's confident enough to rock tight pants and antennae to pull off a costume earns a gold star in my book.

I also have to give props to this dashing duo. Not only did they stay in character throughout the night, they even posed in the mandated "prom photo" stance. If I had a dollar for every bad high school photo of me in this pose...well, I digress.

While I promised Alex to go a little more casual for this year's spread, the spirits got ahold of me and I couldn't resist going that extra mile. We had a full table of savory items, complete with Halloween-inspired names like "Goblin Guts" (artichoke crostini) or "Dragon Lard" (assorted fine cheese)...

And I brought back some old favorites like the ever-popular Boo-rbon slushes as our specialty cocktail, and couldn't help but jump on the pretzel bread craze with these tasty chicken salad sandwiches.

I also created a separate buffet for sweet treats like donuts, cream puffs, cookies and candy, supervised by our resident Rat.

Here's a look at the spread in its entirety. 

We also stocked our bar in the kitchen with red, white, and sparkling wine, beer, and the slushes I've already mentioned.

While throwing this party is an exhausting endeavor, it's a ton of fun and is an annual tradition that we cherish each year. After all, why spend all the time it takes to pull out ten storage containers worth of decorations if you don't have anyone who will enjoy your efforts? 

Did you dress up this year or maybe you had a favorite trick-or-treater that came to your door? I'd love to hear about all the creative costume ideas that made an appearance this year. And, of course, I hope you had a Happy Halloween!