Halloween

There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Especially on Halloween. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, but it wasn’t until I bought my townhouse that I finally had the space to do exactly what I’d always wanted to do with it: Go completely overboard. I finally had a home big enough to entertain, decorate and turn into whatever strange little world I could dream up. And once I realized that, Halloween stopped being a party and became a production. Every year had a theme. Cult Initiation. Freak Show. Alice in Wonderland. Camp Crystal Lake. And the goal was never to throw the same Halloween party twice. Each year was a chance to build an entirely new world—and once I chose the world, every detail had to belong in it. For Cult Initiation, that meant a carefully crafted game of Midsommar shot pong and a full-body charcuterie skeleton, complete with a prosciutto skull, chorizo ribs and a severed prosciutto arm. Because apparently I have never been particularly interested in doing things halfway. Other years meant transforming entire rooms, making props by hand, creating themed food and cocktails, and covering my stairwell in personalized missing-person posters featuring the very people who were about to walk through it. Eventually, my friends started asking me months in advance: “So… what’s the theme this year?” I loved that almost as much as the party itself. I loved having an idea months beforehand and slowly watching it take over my house. I loved hunting for strange little pieces, making things by hand, planning food around the story and spending an objectively unreasonable amount of time on details that maybe five people would notice. Because I noticed them. Halloween became my creative playground. It gave me an excuse to cook, decorate, build, style, host and tell a story all at once. There wasn’t a line between the food and everything happening around it. It was all part of the experience. And looking back now, the through-line is pretty obvious. I still don’t particularly know how to do just dinner. I want the table to feel special. I want the food to be beautiful. I want the unexpected detail you notice halfway through the night. I want people to walk into a space and immediately feel like something is happening here. The townhouse may have been the first place I had enough room to find out just how far I’d take an idea. Turns out, I haven’t hit the ceiling with it yet. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.