all hallows eve

halloween is one of my favorite holidays. not for the costumes necessarily, although i love seeing little ones all dressed up, but i am a sucker for scary movies & tasty food. so, in honor of this special day, mark & i got together with friends of ours {the cooks} to enjoy an evening full of food, movies & great company.

maryclarie & i decided that we would go all out & make a few items that we have been wanting to try for the past few months. my pick was mac n cheese & her's was a pumpkin cake.

we both wanted to finally master a mac n cheese recipe & the one we made was actually really good. the ultimate test was to see what the boys thought & they both went back for seconds and thirds. {we took that as a good sign :)} maryclaire made her famous italian braided bread with dipping sauce. this bread is amazing & relatively easy to make compared to most breads. you might notice that this particular loaf of bread slightly resembles a turkey {haha} but that was unintentional & it usually comes out in more of a braided form. oops!

a favorite halloween treat of maryclaire's are mummy dogs, which are lil smokies wrapped in crescent roll dough & then dipped in ketchup. they are delicious & a halloween must for our group! we gobbled these up at a halloween party the weekend before & luckily had extras to enjoy at our dinner.

and finally, our pumpkin cake. we were inspired to create a cake that we found on pinterest that embodied halloween perfectly! the idea was to make a spice cake in two bundt cakes & then stack them to create a pumpkin. unfortunately, we didn't realize that these people used specific bundt cake pans to get deep ridges that resembled a pumpkin, so our cake came out looking more like a huge donut. we were a little confused & bummed, but we went with what we had! we added a little orange frosting on top & threw the pumpkin idea out the window! regardless of the look it tasted yummy & we had tons of leftovers.

after we devoured all of our food, we cuddled up on the couch with blankets & candy and watched the others. most of us had seen this thriller before, but it had been so long that we couldn't exactly recall the twists & turns throughout the film. all in all, our halloween night was a success & so much fun!