When it comes to Halloween, the folks in our Northrup apartment building commit. It’s serious stuff. With the recent addition of Andy and Catherine, who seem equally if not more into Halloween than the rest of us, we’re a little four-plex of hot bubblin’ love for the holiday.

First step: pumpkin carving. We and the other building residents gathered last Monday evening – despite the fact Jeff and I just got back from Indiana at midnight that morning – for a potluck and carving party, just like we did last year. Jeff and I stepped up our game with our pumpkins compared to last year’s embarassments.

Second step: passing out candy. For our third year in a row, we celebrated Halloween night by ordering takeout, drinking holiday brews and hoisting candy down to kids from our building’s shared front balcony. This year’s setup totally trumped prior years; we had spooky Pandora music jamming from our portable speaker; cobwebs, lights and severed extremities galore; a laser to guide kids to our front door; and later in the evening, Andy’s freakishly realistic-sounding cougar roar to startle the older kids.

Third step: Halloween costume party. Our friends Jessica and Todd eagerly volunteered for party hosting duties, which took the burden off us after last year’s soiree in our backyard. Lindsay, Daniel, Jeff and I thought long and hard about costume ideas to follow our particularly awesome KISS costumes from Halloween 2012. Well, we couldn’t come up with anything better than Batman and villains, so Jeff took the Joker, I was Poison Ivy, Lindsay shimmied into a Catwoman outfit, and Daniel led the crew as Batman. The rest of the costumes at the party were pretty legit – check out some of them below. We jetted before the clock struck midnight though, since Jeff had a Amsterdam-bound flight (work trip) leaving the next day. That means I’m flying solo this week – dealing with the very scary reality of having to cook for myself for the first stretch in years! Eek!