Halloween - The Party

There is a 100% chance that if I don't explain this news story from last winter you will not understand Michaels costume. I didn't bring much attention to this when it happened because we had just gotten here and I didn't want to freak out our families too much. We had only been here a couple weeks when the a big riot in Copenhagen broke out. We were living at the SAS Radisson in central Copenhagen at the time and the very few people who had heard about it emailed us to ask us if we were in any danger. It wasn't far from us, but we were not in harms way.

A few months later, another HUGE riot broke out. This time there was major destruction, including several cars being set on fire and bricks thrown at the police. In short the rioters were a bunch of punk kids trying to save their Youth House, aka Ungdomshuset. The Government had given them this house years ago and then decided to sell the house off. The kids were less then trilled about this and protested.

If you want to know the whys and exactly what the riots were about here is a link with information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset
If you scroll down it talks about the protests and riots.


Pictures
You don't have to watch the whole video... Just a little bit.

So, for Halloween Michael was an "Undomshuset Rioter".
Brick, Flag, Pierced Ears and All.

And I was a Danish Soccer Fan

The Pates

We were excited to see what our guests would come as. Several of them told us this was their very first Halloween Party! HOW FUN! They started arriving at 5:30PM and it was about 2:00AM by the time the last people left. I hope that means they were having fun. The time change happened that night so it was nice to have that extra hour to sleep in and not feel like we slept the day away. We spent the evening eating, drinking and talking. The American candy seemed to go over quite well with most of our guests. I was surprised as I thought most of them wouldn't like it, because Danes always tell us how sweet they think American Candy is.

At the end of the night, I realized I didn't take that many pictures at all. Apparently I was either busy getting this or that ready, or talking and having fun. Those of you who know me, know that at events and visits I can't make myself put up the camera so I was shocked that I didn't take that many pictures. Jason, where were you when I needed a backup camera man huh? Here are the few pictures I did take.

Jens the Ghoul

Dorte the Witch and Karl Kristian as Dracula

Klaus - Matchstick Man

Jens the Scary guy from Scream and Hella as Shrek

Flemming the Ugly Woman and Maja the Mummy
We had a costume contest and "The Mummy" won.
She got a bottle of Casillero del Diablo Wine.
(Translation....Cellar of the Devil)

Helena the little prisoner.
She was adorable and belongs to the cross dresser and the Mummy.
The number on her outfit is Michaels TI employee number!! I asked Flemming if the number meant anything and read it out loud and Michael said, thats my a.i.d. number!

Scary characters on our couch

I forgot to post him with the decorations!
This is our Scarecrow guarding the bucket of candy. :)

Chatting
These two were brave enough to take the train in their costumes!!
They said they had many people looking at them.

Siblings

More Chatting

We are already talking about next year...and so were our guests when they were leaving!!!
So, just call us: "The Pates: Bringing Halloween to Denmark one Dane at a time" :o)

Halloween - The Preperations

Halloween in Denmark is a pretty new holiday. Halloween stuff is starting to pop up in stores, but in teeny tiny quantities, but it has a long way to go to get to the US of A. We have been having an annual Halloween party for the past few years with Mary and Jason and decided this year, even if they weren't here, we would still have a party....so we did! Most of our decorations came from stuff we already had and we made a couple trips to IKEA to get lots of black and orange decorations (candles, circular rugs, blanket and even a new orange shower curtain) to help set the Halloween mood. We had some American candy that you can't find here shipped to us along with some spider webs and other fun Halloween stuff. These pictures are all mostly taken during the day, but our flat looked so cool at night with all the candles lit. We had the AIM Halloween station playing all night long as well.

These are just some of our decorations, we had stuff all over the place.

Michael Carving a Pumpkin
Notice his earing's are back in his ears...its part of the Halloween costume.

Entrance
Window Sill
Candles You can see in the background our pumpkin and ghost candle holders glowing
Book case

And then there was our bathroom...AKA the Witch Kitchen
This took the longest because we had to make all the jars.

This is how we had it set up.

If any of our guests got curious and wanted to open the door to see what else was in there we stuck some more stuff in the other side. One of our guest told us she even checked in the shower to see if we had anything behind the shower curtain!
Our Witch Jars

Witch Warts

More Jars

I figured out what's wrong with the washer/dryer...apparently a ghost is living in it ;)

Drink/Dessert Table

The food all got to live in the sun room.
The plate and utensils table

And the food table
For dinner we had Chili, Crackers, Bread, Salad, Banana Nut Bread, and a Cheese Plate.
We had some vegetarians at our party so I attempted Veggie Chili. I just substituted my ground beef with lentils and actually turned out pretty good....(though not as good as the beef) :)

I had found these to make for desert about a month before the party. Then about 4 days before our party I saw that my "Cooking Light" magazine had put this recipe in their magazine as well. They turned out to be pretty sweet, but still managed to have a nice taste to them despite the sweetness.

Next post.....Halloween Costumes...

Halloween Preview

We had planned all week to spend Saturday in Copenhagen, because there were three things we needed to get done in the city.

1. Get a Guinness :)
2. Purchase everything we need for our Halloween costumes
3. Go to "Halloween in Tivoli"

The air was quite chilly and according to the weather, it was the coldest it has been in Copenhagen so far this season. I can, without a doubt, feel winter in the air.

The Guinness was great (Always is). We hit a new Irish Pub and I think this one will be our new favorite and regular place to get our Guinness fix. Not only was our Guinness poured correctly (Pour and let it sit for 2 minutes, and then fill it the rest of the way), but the bar tender made little shamrocks on the head of the beer. Way fun! It was a pretty cold day, but the sun was shining and we were able to sit outside comfortably.

We did get everything we needed for our costumes and I think they are going to look great. Unfortunately, I can't say what we are going to be here because some of the people coming over read this blog from time to time. So you'll just have to wait and see what we are. ;)

Tivoli was a lot of fun. This was, I believe, only the second year that Tivoli has re-opened for Halloween. We spend a couple hours there walking around, eating, and checking out all the cool Halloween shops they had set up. This was a nice change because most stores sell very little Halloween stuff. The toy stores don't even have more then a small section of stuff set up. Denmark is just now starting to embrace Halloween, but they have a LOOOOONG way to go to catch up to all its hype and glory that it holds in the states.

Check out the cool Pumpkin Roof

Decorations

Me (with several layers of cloths on) and My New Friend.

I think Tivoli bought all the pumpkins in Denmark

Michael and the Pumpkins


We got back home about 7:00pm and were exhuasted. Both of our heads hurt and we felt like we were coming down with something. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that we were outside in colder then normal weather all day long. We crashed at 9:30 and got a good nights rest and felt all better this morning. :)

Nichole the Sloth

Michael is just a few short hours form landing back in Denmark. I think he is going to be quite the sleepy bear when he stumbles out from getting his luggage. This is the first time I will actually go to the airport to "pick him up". It sounds sweet, but I have a hidden agenda. STARBUCKS! The only Starbucks in Denmark is located in the airport right in the entrance hall and just opened right before our trip to Istanbul. We haven't taken advantage of it yet, because we would rather just go through security and get our free drinks in the lounge. Can you blame us? But today, I'm going to go get my steamy cup of coffee and sit and wait for "Hubsters" to come on out. He had asked me to get him something too so when he gets to me, he will have some coffee to waken his sleepy eyes.

The 3 days he was gone went fast. I honestly didn't do much, but it was great. I hit the gym in the morning rather then the evenings which was a nice change, then spent the rest of the days doing a little important stuff, but for the most part turned into a sloth.

Wednesday my friend Sarah came over for dinner. We ate, chatted, drank tea and had a nice time.

Yesterday, I marched myself over to IKEA to get some "Halloween Supplies". We are hosting a Halloween party for some TI'ers and their families, but I needed a few more things. Now, unfortunately, I have to wait a month-ish till its Halloween time. *sigh*

I think our weekend will consist of Michael recuperating from his whirlwind trip to Japan. Then Sunday we are having the two new students (Daniel and Jason) over for a pancake/waffle breakfast. I don't I have had a pancake OR waffle in over a year, so I think my waffle iron will be happy to get to cook again.