#hocuttdecades

Life in East Asia is always my favorite when the holidays come around as the parties become more frequent and lots of fun. I love doing crafts and baking goods for the students to enjoy and as draining as party after party may be in the holiday season, it is still something that I miss the most being away from home. And nothing could have been better than to start the fall holiday season off here in America than with a Halloween Dashing Through the Decades evangelism style party!

Harrison and I were blessed to get to put my love for party planning and cooking and his planning and getting things done gifts together and plan a 20s-80s youth Halloween party for our church youth and the middle school and high school students of the Clayton area. Our theme was dashing through the decades and it was such a fun and incredible night!

We luckily decided on a theme just before going down to Alabama at the end of September which brought us the great joy of searching through my grandmother's closet for clothes and finding many great jewels! With a flapper style dress, a beaded 80s little number, and many other great sweaters and dresses we had quite the challenge of picking which decade to go with, but after a trip to Goodwill we decided on the 80s with our great jacket find for Harrison.

Is that mustache real? Yeah! No it isn't! Yes it is, pull it! No!!...that's gross! hahaha

Yep that was one of the conversations we had while at the party as Harrison shaved his beard fully off for the first time in over a year leaving just the 'stache. Yes he does still have the 'stache as it is no shave November and we have not come to a final decision as to if he has to shave it when I get back home from Savannah on Sunday, haha.

I had so much fun decorating the youth center and cooking many delicious treats for the night. A special shout out and thanks to Lori and Ava Daniels and Madi Stephens who helped me cook all day and get our 100ish cupcakes decorated which Madi is incredible at! Food wise we had a huge display of food such as chickfila nuggets, cupcakes, sausage balls, rice krispies, puppy chow, trail mix, dirt cake, brownies and rotell dip with chips!

At the party we had a pumpkin carving contest which was so fun to watch and see the designs....

 Wizard of Oz decorating their Caswell pumpkin

3rd place pumpkin 

2nd place pumpkin

1st place pumpkin!

We also set up a black backdrop with photobooth props for people to take pictures with. Here are a few from the night...

SMURFS

The Wizard of Oz

Harrison and Dave enjoyed posing too...

I must say I think the favorite event of the night came from our first year in EA at our winter conference in Thailand.... Shadow dance competition! Here you set up a white screen which was made using pipes, bungee chords, clips and a white sheet. You put a spotlight shining on the back of it. People line up where no one can see them and they dance behind the screen being judged by their silhouettes.

These two were incredible!

We also had Mitchell perform the Napolean Dynamite dance for everyone, we gave away a Ipad 2 and many door prizes and just had a good time. But right before the giveaways and drawings, Harrison took a few minutes to share the real purpose of the party. The 80 or so middle and high school students that attended heard the Gospel and the way to respond. We hope that if nothing else, they walked away that night either encouraged as believers or convicted if they are living without Christ.