This was a good Halloween.

First off, in five years of Halloweens in DC, this was the first time it was warm. Usually, it is earmuffs and see-your-breath cold. But this year I was in shorts and eventually tied my coat around my waist. So, win for me. Pleasebeaharbingerofthingstocome. Pleasebeaharbingerofthingstocome.

Our neighborhood is Sesame Street minus the Muppets, and all the cute families come out to go trick-or-treating, so every year we take a walk around to see the costumes, mostly superheroes and princesses. I especially like the really rich block, where the ratio of kids with bags of candy to adults with wineglasses is close to 1:1. And those kids are decked out! This year my favorite kid was a crazy adorable two year old elephant. Or maybe he was a Republican. In this city, you can’t really tell. And when you think about it, most politicians have the temperament of a toddler, so perhaps his parents were using him as existential social commentary. Or they just realized he would be SUPER CUTE DRESSED AS AN ELEPHANT. Either way, another win for me because, cuteness.

After our evening walk, we usually come home and eat the candy we pretended to have bought for trick or treaters while we watch a (hopefully) scary Netflix. But we are both so vimmed up (yes, I’m still enjoying my new favorite word), we decided to get fancy and try something new. So we got online and looked up how to make our favorite candy bars ourselves.

My choice was homemade peanut butter cups. It was surprisingly easy. Two layers of melted chocolate, with peanut butter mixed with some butter and powdered sugar. Without all the preservatives it wasn’t an exact taste match to what I’m used to, but it was still really good. Each layer had to be chilled, but overall it was so easy that I was able to do it without help, which means it was really easy. If you decide to try it, I recommend letting the final product warm up to room temperature before you eat it. It gets messy, but it tastes better with the chocolate soft.

David of course got fancy, and went for a homemade Milky Way. I’d never really thought about it before, but did you realize that nougat is marshmallow? For some reason that blew my mind. But he mixed marshmallow fluff with chocolate and I was impressed with the results. Topped with caramel, cut into bars, and dipped in chocolate. Well, we didn’t actually dip it, because by that point things were getting messy and we were ready to be eating already, so we just did one side. Again, it tastes better at room temperature, and we had to eat it with a fork it was so messy, but omg it was good.

I’m a little embarrassed that the first recipes I post here are for candy, but hey, it is Halloween. And I didn’t take any pictures, because, c’mon, what you end up with never looks anything like what the pretty recipe pictures look like. But we didn’t make it for a fancypants dinner party, we made it to eat in the dark with a movie. Perfect.

While we gorged on candy, we first watched a very-thin Nicole Kidman ever-so-slowly figure out her situation in “The Others”, which really holds up and was a lot of fun. Then we turned on the new episode of “American Horror Story”, which began with Denis O’Hare having a tea party with a room full of dolls. This is an image I can never unsee and will haunt me forever. Well played, Ryan Murphy, well played.