For 7 years now, I have dedicated my Novembers to pounding out novel after novel, fighting against the odds to prove that I CAN do anything I set my mind to. And for nearly as long, other Wrimos across the country have gathered in San Francisco for one night of that month to experience this challenge together, with food, drink, and merriment.

When I started NaNoWriMo, I was in college. So not only was I writing an obscene amount of words in a month, I was doing it amidst homework! Amidst tests and class periods and my part time job! And each year I thought, “Maybe I’ll make it down to San Francisco this year,” but each year threw new obstacles in my way, and traveling for the sake of writing never fit into my crazy schedule.

But on this, my eighth year of reckless novel abandon, my friend and writing cohort Liz and I decided THIS. This was our year.

I have many blog posts already about the road trip, so for this, let’s focus on the event itself. This is also my very first bucket list post! If you want to see the other things on my (still growing) bucket list, you can check that out here.

Anyway, Liz and I got dressed up (the theme was Noir) and arrived at the ballroom via Lyft. Let me just tell you, this ballroom was gorgeous. It was located in the Merchant Exchange building right in the middle of the city, and the view was fabulous. There were tables everywhere, a little podium up front for speakers, and raffle prizes along the wall.

The open bar had fun novelty drinks such as the Noveltini, Cosmonovelton and GimLit. The Noveltini was my favorite. There was also a candy bar, where writers could refill a little white bag with enough sugar as they would need to get them through the write-a-thon. Dinner was fabulous and consisted of too many delicious things for me to even remember, and of course, throughout the night, they also served us donut holes and had a late night milk & cookie bar. The food was by far one of the best parts of the evening.

As far as activities went, sometimes it felt like there was almost too much to do! There was food to eat (as I mentioned), writers to mingle with, staff to meet, booze to drink, and a professional “author portrait” studio set up in back. Anyone attending the gala could get their photo snapped for use on our NaNo author pages, potential book jackets someday, who knows! That was a lot of fun. There were also timed writing sprints over the course of the night, as well as table wars, which encouraged the different tables of writers to get as many words written as they could so as not to let down your other table mates. It was a good motivator.

I was too excited about everything going on to take many pictures, so instead of seeing the gala itself, you get this selfie.

Let me talk about the tables for a second. It was a beautiful sight. The people running this event clearly know what they’re doing, as every single table in that ballroom had a powerstrip beneath it for attendees to plug their laptops into. Just try and imagine a gorgeous banquet room filled with people dressed to the nines with their laptops in a circle around their fancy tables. It was a sight to behold; especially when laptops were favored over other items and no one knew where to put their plates, wine glasses or candy bags. It was a juggling act, but made for great conversation. And, as far as I know, nothing was spilled on anyone’s computer.

After the food, another big highlight for me was getting to finally meet the people behind NaNoWriMo. This event has literally helped shape the last eight years of my life, and so much of that time was spent alone in my room, fingers poised above a laptop. Getting to not only meet and hug the people who created this crazy project, but to be in a room of 250 others who so completely understand what this project means to me was overwhelming. I might have gotten a little emotional.

I first met Shelby Gibbs and Tim Kim back at LeakyCon this summer, and they are the ones who convinced Liz and I to make the trip to San Francisco for the event. It was so lovely to see them again, and to get to meet Chris Angotti, the Director of Programs, Grant Faulkner, the Executive Director, Tavia Stewart-Streit, the Deputy Director, and so many others! And everyone knew who I was! Writing that NaNoWriMo song was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I had a lot of people come up to me and tell me they listen to it every year to get pumped to start writing. That meant more than anyone could ever imagine.

I also got to announce the second table war, as well as saying who won when it was over. I had a blast, especially because it meant I got the microphone for a small amount of time. Of course I used that opportunity to ask for a show of hands for who pronounces it my way, “na-no-wree-mo”. I lost, overwhelmingly, but hey! There were at least twenty or so people who raised their hands!

Getting to attend this event was something Liz and I have only ever dreamed of doing. We both managed to write about 2,500 words over the course the evening, made friends with our tablemates, stuffed ourselves with food and drink and went home exhausted but so, so happy. The crazy long road trip we took to get there was completely worth it. I am extremely happy with my very first bucket list item, and if everything on that list is as fun as this first one, then I highly look forward to starting to cross them off over the rest of my life.

There’s still 8 days left of NaNoWriMo! Who’s still in? How much would you like to be able to attend an event like this, dedicated solely to writing and to raising money to help empower others to write books? It was a dream come true, for me. Thanks for reading, and hopefully my next bucket list item won’t be too far off.

The outfit of the day portion of this blog post is coming, I promise. It’s a journey we’ll take together, this time.

So last week Thursday, my good friend and roommate Liz Leo and I set out on the most ambitious roadtrip we’ve ever taken, just the two of us. The trip was for NaNoWriMo and the Night of Writing Dangerously, which we’ve each done successfully for the past 8 years (7 for Liz) but never been to the huge write-a-thon party held in San Francisco each year. We powered down to Springfield, OR, stayed the night, then made our way all the way to Stockton on Friday. There was a lot of music listening, switching off who’s driving and who’s writing (we’re hardcore), appreciating how beautiful our corner of the country is, and hunting down the best roadside places to eat.

Then finally, on Saturday… we made it!! San Francisco is a crazy place, and man it feels good driving across the Bay bridge and knowing you earned being there, after 2 straight days in the car. Traffic or no traffic, we had arrived at our destination.

Of course the first thing Liz and I agreed to do was go to the Walt Disney Family Museum. I really didn’t know much about it, and we thought we’d just stop by and poke around for an hour or so… What really ended up happening was over three hours whizzing by without us even realizing it. The museum is FANTASTIC. I really enjoyed myself and I’m so glad we remembered to check it out.

The weather was beautiful in the city that day; sunny and clear but crisp in temperature, perfect for sweaters without jackets. I wore my brand new floral sweater and black skirt from Forever21, my red ankle boots from ModCloth, and coral colored socks I got from a cute little independent shop on the Ave by UW. It was a perfect outfit for traveling – comfortable enough for a long ride in the car, but fun enough for tourist pictures! I also bought myself some goodies in the museum gift shop, including a few gifts for people, so I wont be sharing those quite yet. If you ever get a chance to check this museum out, please do! It was wonderful.

This weekend was a crazy one.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday sleeping and drinking water furiously in hopes of getting better in time for Extra Life, the 25 hour gaming marathon meant to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network. I mentioned this on here before, but my team (Geekyhostess, Satire and the rest of Team Hypercube) host a 25 hour live show so folks can interact with us while we attempt to play games straight for all that time. I am now happy to report that we’ve done it for two years in a row, though I personally struggled a bit more than the rest of them.

We agreed that I should come a few hours late, so I didn’t start the day off poorly. While my lovely team began gaming at 8am on Saturday, I took my time, took some medicine, and waltzed in around 10:30. But then I was great! My nose was significantly less stuffy, my head felt less explodey and I managed to take part in a surprising number of games. I started feeling woozy again around 10pm, but to be perfectly honest – making it 12 hours on the upswing of a cold was largely impressive.

During the time that I was on, some highlights included: playing King of Tokyo, testing out the Job Hunters RPG, Cash and Guns, You Don’t Know Jack, and of course, Babycam. I also quite enjoyed scary game hour, and listening to the rest of the team making their silly themed Magic the Gathering decks.

It’s a bummer that I was sick, but we had a LOT of fun doing Extra Life anyway. Everyone in the chat was incredibly supportive and great, we got to try a lot of new games, and we managed to double our goal — hitting $2,000 raised by 6am!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the live stream, and furthermore THANK YOU to the amazing people who donated. You can still donate here if you missed it and want to help out.

Now it’s time to catch up on NaNoWriMo after the craziness of Extra Life is over. Be sure to follow me on twitter for word sprints this month!

I’m sad to announce that this is the final entry in my Knockturn Alley party post series. The final shop we created in our living room was the Cauldron Shop, and it was made by my friend and roommate Eia Waltzer. I was super impressed with what she did with the theme – the only idea I really gave her was “fill cauldrons with food and drinks”. Great artistic direction, I know.

But Eia is a creative mastermind, and she definitely made this corner of the party her own.

It was pretty dark over in the Cauldron Shop, but that was purposeful. As you can see above, nearly everything in Eia’s shop glowed in the dark. She had, by far, the most popular drinks and snacks – but I’m not sure if that was due to her masterful cooking skills or the fact that we literally had a light up fountain.

This fountain was one of my absolutely favorite party purchases. You can buy it for your next party here on Amazon, and it was really reasonably priced. We called this punch Amortencia, the love potion of the Harry Potter universe. They say Amortencia smells different to everyone who sniffs it; similarly, our Amortencia tasted different at various points of the night because it kept getting refilled with slightly different ingredients.

Oh also, I don’t know how obvious it is – but those white things floating in the fountain are eyeballs. It just made sense.

Both drinks at the Cauldron Shop came in punch bowls because, duh, they look like cauldrons. I don’t have a close up picture of it, but if you look at that first picture again you can see the glowing blue punch bowl on the left – that one held Unicorn’s Blood. The lights at the bottom were blue glow sticks. It was a mixture of blue Hawaiian punch and Whipped Vodka and it was delicious. Most party guests said it was their favorite.

On to food! First up are these delicious wrapped hotdogs Eia lovingly named “Frankenweenies”:

This is a terrible picture, I apologize – but that’s what you get when you try to photograph food in Knockturn Alley. The funny part about these little guys is that for two years now Eia has been calling these Frankenweenies… but it occurred to us this past weekend that there’s nothing “Franken” about them! They’re mummies! It’s too late though. The name has stuck, and they look creepy enough to be served at a dark wizard gathering, so they got to stay.

I found these great little mini cauldrons at the local party store, so Eia fashioned her own version of Cauldron Cakes out of them: vanilla pudding died green, crumbled oreos, and gummy worms. Don’t pretend like that doesn’t sound AMAZING.

I believe Eia’s greatest conquest to be these Pumpkin Pasties. She made those cake pops entirely by hand and they were wonderful. I really appreciated the unique approach to more “common” Harry Potter treats, and it was greatly appreciated amongst party guests.

Now that I’ve shared the entire party on this blog, I’m curious what your favorite parts were? Which shop did you like the best, or did you prefer one of the other aspects of the party more? What was your favorite reference to Harry Potter?

I can’t tell you how much fun we had planning this party. I feel like I’ve preparing for this party ever since I was 13 and started reading these books; ever since I first fell in love with Slytherin house. The night of the party will go down in history as one of my favorite events of all time, and I only wish I could have shared it with ALL of the Harry Potter friends I have made over the years.

Thanks for following along as I recounted the experience, and I hope you’ve been inspired to throw your own themed parties. Themes parties are the best parties.

Also, before I end this party series forever, I feel like it’s prudent to admit that somehow, a party guest dressed as DUMBLEDORE won the costume contest. No joke.

I guess good really does always triumph over evil. Humph.

Hey guys! Rather than try to figure out her vision myself for this post, I figured it would be better to give you guys the real deal. I introduce to you my friend and roommate Liz Leo, the mastermind behind the Spiny Serpent portion of our Knockturn Alley party.

The Spiny Serpent is home to all things creepy, crawly, and scaly. You simply can’t find stock like this anywhere else in the wizarding world. We have your spiders. We have your maggots. We have your miniature poison-egg-laying dragons (perfect for brunch with ex-boyfriends).

A regular here at the Spiny Serpent, Mr. Dungeon Troll (his parents weren’t very original), once told me a story about how a pesky boy wizard stuck a wand up his nose when he was just trying to go to the bathroom during a Halloween party. We decided to honor his tale with a pretzel and dip delicacy (the dip featured here is cheese, as we ran out of real bogeys just moments ago).

We have scores of dragons that lay all sorts of pernicious confections. Some eggs make perfect smoke bombs to be used for sneaky escapes. Others contain scrolls that predict the future. These- well these are chicken eggs that I hard boiled, gently cracked the shell, and soaked in red and black food coloring for a few hours- I tend to save the real dragon eggs for higher paying customers.

Maybe window shoppers like yourself might be more interested in some dragon scales and goblin blood- only a knut a scoop. Our dragons shed like mad in the summer, so we sell the scales by the bag all autumn long. However in a pinch blue tortilla chips and verde salsa will get you through a dry spring.Finally, if you’re like me and you spend a large portion of your time wrestling giant flesh eating slugs away from your nursery of carnivorous shrubs, sprouts, and seedlings, then you’ll be needing this drink to take your mind off of your struggles. This “Flesh Eating Slug Repellant” features margarita mix spiked with tequila, limeade, and ginger ale- plus the salt around the rim will make sure the slugs don’t go for your flesh as well. (Oh, and please forgive our signage’s spelling error. Our house elf Winky must have gotten into the sauce before practicing her penmanship.)

*cue ominous music

The largest shop at our Halloween party was Borgin & Burkes, naturally, as it’s the only Knockturn Alley shop we really know anything about. For some reason our house has a built-in bar, so we designed this shop around it. Technically it was assigned to my roommate Justin, but it was more a collaboration between all of us.

The idea was to have food in the front, and a museum of artifacts “for sale” in the back.

Each of the dark artifacts had a tag on it with the name and a price. Some were things we happened to have sitting around the house already (like the books and creepy picture frame and hourglass) while others we either purchased specifically for the event (ie. George’s ear) or entirely made from scratch.

This hand of glory was made by my roommate Liz. She worked on it for days, creating the entire thing out of popsicle sticks, hot glue, paper mache, acrylic paint and wax. You can read her hilarious and disturbing tutorial here. The red display pillow we happened to find at a consignment store on the same day as the party, which was exactly the sort of luck we kept running into throughout most of the party-planning process.

Eia created this pensieve. The concoction inside is a mixture of almond milk, blue food coloring that we took care not to mix too thoroughly, and fine glitter. If you create a pensieve for your own party, please make sure your guests don’t confuse it with another punch bowl!

Next up were the food and drinks for Borgin & Burkes. We went pretty dark with everything at this station, which was surprisingly fun for creating snacks. Every party needs chips and dip, so that was an easy one.

One of my all time favorite party foods is stuffed mushrooms, which are inherently creepy looking. Those were a hit and instantly fit at the Borgin & Burkes spread. I forgot to put a tag on these ones, but I thought they looked a bit like mandrakes:

And finally, the drinks. No wizard party would be complete with Firewhiskey, and I also really wanted to create a drink for Draught of Living Death:

The firewhiskey was just Fireball whiskey (no use making it more complicated than it needed to be), while the Draught of Living Death was a bit more on the fancy side. We used drop shot cups with cranberry juice on the outside, and black Blavod vodka on the inside. It’s pure black! It absolutely had that creepy, foreboding look – but was quite popular with the guests.

I really loved that our party guests all took the time to walk through and take in the detail we put into each shop, and Borgin & Burkes was definitely the most exciting one for crafts and artifacts. I love the scene in Chamber of Secrets when Harry mistakenly ends up here and wanders through some of the creepier things on display, so we wanted to try and recreate that feeling. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for the remaining two shops!

The first shop from our Knockturn Alley party that I am going to highlight is the Apothecary – which is the one I made! I have always loved Halloween spreads that include a bunch of creepy glass jars and vials, so I called dibs on this one to give that idea a wizardy potion bottle twist. Here’s what I came up with:

My shop focused a bit more on decorations than most of the others; I wanted to give the table the illusion of a pretty tea party that wilted and rotted after years of neglect. I was able to use a lot of things we already had in our house, actually. The tattered bunny was a leftover prop made for a costume I wore to a horror movie party, the doll with the bleeding eyes was actually Liz’s from the dinner party we went to last week. My favorite prop made specifically for this party, however, was the “doll in a jar”. I was inspired by watching a few two many episodes of American Horror Story:

The candy wands were kind of an afterthought, to be honest. I bought a tin of Pirouettes because they have that tea party feel, and realized as I was setting them out that they could double as wands. That’s the fun of throwing a themed party like this: the Harry Potter universe is so expansive that it’s really fun and easy to tie in just about anything.

Keeping up with crafts, here’s the array of potion bottles I made:

You’d be amazed how much of this stuff is entirely normal household items! From left to right we have sliced peaches in a light syrup, then the Eye of Newt bottle has yellow dyed water with sugar babies at the bottom to look like eyes. Next the fancier bottle has chopped up cauliflower stems in blue dyed water, and the Dragon Blood vial is simply Orange Crush soda. Second to last is an actual non-edible slime mixture, and finally the largest jar has cauliflower stalks and beef broth (which I thought looked a bit like cat brains).

Now that you’re good and hungry (haha) let’s move on to food!

These pastries ended up being kind of a mistake, but they worked out just fine in the end and were delicious as well! I meant to make little pastry purses but they all ended up opening while they were baking. That was just fine though – I thought the blueberries wedged inside the flaky casing made them look like a sort of poisonous plant, so Venoumous Tentacula they became!

I was quite proud of the drinks at my shop: This first one came in these lovely test tube vials and were dubbed Veritaserum. The potion is always described as colorless, but I still wanted to do something fun with it, so I created a raspberry vodka and tonic water mixture (because tonic water reacts under blacklights). You can’t quite tell in this picture, but these drinks were a perfect addition to the glow theme at the party (and were quite popular for it). You can get the test tubes and rack here on Amazon.

Next up was the Polyjuice Potion. I was quite proud of this one:

Just short of putting actual bits of things in the shots (no one wants to drink anything that has pieces of hair or fingernails in it, even on Halloween) we wanted to create a texture that still looked chunky enough to be Polyjuice Potion. These jello shots were a labour of love, creating three different colors of jello and spooning them into the cups separately after letting them firm up a bit. I used this recipe as a guide (though as cooking usually goes, they turned out a bit differently).

Needless to say, the Polyjuice Potion was another popular item during the party, though we did hear they were quite strong. Whoops!

So, that was the Apothecary! There are still three more shops to feature, so please look out for those. I’m more than curious to hear your thoughts, and let me know if you’d like the recipes for any of the food items mentioned above!

So, I have been hinting about this online for weeks – but my roommates and I have been tirelessly working on an epic Halloween party we threw at our house. I’m talking party committee meetings, organized shopping trips, and scheduled craft nights. We host a Halloween party every year, but this year… we went ALL out. Being a house full of Harry Potter fanatics, we decided it was time to give our party the ultimate theme: Knockturn Alley.

Upon arriving at our house, the first thing guests were greeted by was this flaming fireplace doorway and bucket of Floo powder. Our door is naturally lime green, so it felt only right that it would be connected to the Floo network. Wizards could shout “Knockturn Alley!” and throw a handful of sand, while unassuming muggles would mispronounce Diagon Alley as “Digonelly!” and show up in the same place.

Once inside, all guests were encouraged to put their name in the Goblet of Fire. We didn’t tell them why initially (just that they might be “chosen”), then random times throughout the night my roommate Justin (dressed as Voldemort) shown a dark mark symbol on the ceiling and drew names of guests from the goblet.

These selected guests would then become Death Eaters and would receive a green wrist band. Guests with wrist bands got special treatment (ie. prizes) throughout the evening.

To get down to where the party was, party-goers were encouraged to follow the spiders. A trail of spiders led all the way down the stairs, down the next hallway and into the living room.

Then in the living room, we created the illusion of the dark and creepy Knockturn Alley by covering everything in black tablecloths and shining a green floodlight across the room. Each corner had a separate “shop” with its own sign, theme, decor, food and beverages. The four shops we chose were actual ones from Knockturn Alley: of course we had Borgin and Burkes; this was the main and largest shop that took place at our built in bar. Next was the Spiny Serpent (which we know very little about from the books) so we turned it into a bestiary. The Cauldron Shop was next, which had food and drinks of and pertaining to all things cauldron-related. The final shop was the Apothecary, which mostly had interesting drinks as well as an assortment of creepy potion inspired decorations.

I will have blog posts up about each of these individual shops in the next couple of days (that I will eventually link to from this post) so please keep an eye out for that!

My favorite aspect of this party was that everything was supposed to be dark, creepy, and relatively colorless. Except, of course, for the drinks (to represent potions, and a wizard party, of course). We installed four black-lights around the living room, and used UV reactant cups as well as flashing plastic “ice cubes” for the drinks, so once guests started mingling and dancing and drinking, it kind of turned into a dark wizard rave. The image of a dark, foggy room filled with people in fantastic dark wizard costumes with only glowing drinks for lights was a pretty intense, amazing visual theme for the party; one I am quite proud of. It worked even better than we could have planned.

There’s so much more I want to share but I will save it for the next blog posts; in closing I will leave you with the creepiest aspect of the party: the bathroom.

Maybe it’s the Slytherin in me (sorry guys – newly sorted Hufflepuff or no, there will always be an element of Slytherin in my bones) but I really wanted to make people regret going to the bathroom. So we did this to our shower:

I tied it in by saying the brain was one from the Department of Mysteries… but even I’ll admit that was a stretch. I just wanted to freak people out.

It was a fantastic night, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and I was so thankful for all of the help I had in pulling it off. My roommates were absolutely amazing in helping get everything ready, as were a handful of my friends who came over early to help us finish setting up.

My roommates! Liz as a shop keeper, Justin as Voldemort, myself as Narcissa and Eia as the Grey Lady.

I don’t know if I’ll ever throw a party quite this grand ever again, but I’m pleased to be able to check it off my list. I don’t know if other people have thrown Death Eater or Knockturn Alley parties before but we had so much fun scouring the books for ideas. I’m curious to know your thoughts, as I know many of the people who read my blog are also huge Harry Potter fans! How did we do?

Last week, my good friend Tara of the GeekyHostess threw one of the strangest dinner parties I’ve ever been to. All we knew upon arrival was that we should wear “whatever you would normally wear to a reading of a will for a distant relative/acquaintance in his fancy home. ” I took this opportunity to wear a lacy black dress from H&M I don’t have nearly enough reasons to wear, black heeled boots from Cathy Jean, purple tights, emerald nail polish, a peacock feather pendant, a sock bun and my favorite piece of jewelry – a “poison ring”, which has a hidden compartment for storing things.

We arrived at Tara’s place and were met with the creepiest tea party I have ever seen. Don’t get me wrong: the food and drinks looked amazing (Tara always outdoes herself); no, it was the dolls placed everywhere with broken faces and bleeding eyes that set my teeth on edge.

Then, even though I was surrounded by my best friends, we entertained the most forced, awkward dinner conversation of all time – pretending no one knew each other and all had to discover how we were acquainted with the deceased (Harold Winchester the Third, a man who loved dolls more than anything else). It was the craziest meta-game ever. I can’t even explain it.

After dinner was the reading of the will, or rather, a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill where we were instructed to find Harold’s favorite room in the house so the will could be read there. The only catch – we were the characters in the game. Quite literally:

The game turned into a crazed hunt through the house to find the voodoo doll versions of ourselves and destroy them before Harold’s equally frightening attorney could kill us as keep us as dolls in his newly inherited collection forever. I was a paper doll, as seen above. I died.

I don’t want to spoil too much, as Tara is writing up a post on her own blog about the evening, and there’s a Team Hypercube video about the event as well. Basically it was another perfect example of how weird/awesome my friend group is, and how I don’t think we’re even capable of doing anything normal. Of course we’d attend a murder tea party. Of course we would.

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I know I’m one of the many people who experience this fall frenzy, but I go absolutely nuts in October. Everything about it makes me happy – parties, decorating, dressing up, food, outdoor activities while it’s still slightly warm enough. I can’t even totally place a finger on it… I think it’s this shifting of priorities as we feel that sting of nostalgia as Summer wanes to an end. But! Then we’re met with three months of pure holiday filled excitement, and it makes the switch to Winter so much more bearable. One of the things at the very top of that list for me is corn mazes.

I don’t know if corn mazes are popular everywhere, but you only have to drive about forty minutes out of Seattle to find good ones here in the Pacific Northwest. My friends and I attended Bob’s Corn Maze this past weekend (as well as renting our own private fire pit!), and I think everyone was surprised by how much we enjoyed ourselves.

When you arrive at Bob’s, you first check in and leave all of your campfire supplies with them in these plastic tubs. They don’t want you to have to lug it all through the maze! Then a giant tractor takes you over to the maze on a bumpy hayride, and before you know it you’re sent into the entrance where you’re immediately turned around and walking in circles. The maze was huge. Even in a group of nine intellectual college graduates – we didn’t know where the heck we were going. Finally we found ourselves in a big circle we recognized had to be a specific part of that map and were able to navigate ourselves out with a bit less trouble.

The halfway point has a couple of giant campfires and a little store that sold s’mores fixin’s and drinks, but we had our own campfire. We walked around the corner to one of the many smaller pits, where our tub was waiting for us (filled with hotdogs, marshmallows and roasting sticks). We had one hour at the fire pit, which was more than enough to make some delicious food and recuperate enough to start round two.

We had even more trouble finding our way back out of the maze – but wandering around with only the moonlight to guide you, making Goblet of Fire 3rd task jokes, trying not to get smacked in the face by rogue corn stalks… it was definitely a night to remember.

Have you ever been to a corn maze? Do you remember what any of the shapes in yours made up? Ours was a series of very confusing loops with a giant bee in the middle, and it was so confusing! And if you haven’t been to a corn maze… are there any near you? Go check them out! Let me know your thoughts on October activities in the comments!