Días de los Muertos - Days of the dead

Over the last week or two we've been celebrating the days of the dead in their various forms. San Antonio is brilliant; not only do we get the usual American Halloween fun including work celebrations, dressing up, lots of sugar and trick or treating but we also get the Mexican / Catholic celebrations of El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which is both a memorial and celebration of those who have passed on.

First off there was the work Halloween party which included a hallway decorating contest, costume contest (I was a judge, ha!), mummy wrapping game and dessert contest! The photo below is our friend Katy's 3rd place dessert entry (I think it should have won).

Katy's jelly brain dessert with berry sauce

Then there was the actual night of Halloween. I made a big pot of my Tassie Devil chilli (and a vegetarian version - neither of which actually include devils) and we headed on down to John and Jo's since their house is in a better neighbourhood for the festivities (you don't really get trick or treaters at apartments unless organised by the complex). There were a bunch of us going, some to trick or treat and some to man the door and hand out candy, but the deal was we all had to dress up. We thought we were all organised with Marty's costume since we had this fabulous chilli-pepper outfit we bought before he even existed... but at the last minute we discovered a wardrobe malfunction! Every time he moved his legs it popped open! It was too small!! (Actually, I think it was designed by someone who had never seen a real baby...maybe one of those people who design costumes for dogs) We did manage to get a few pics before retiring the chilli.

Awww

He was remarkably chipper all through the dressing up process!

Hot stuff (aww come on, someone had to say it!)

RAWR!

Luckily his mama did some fancy footwork and secured him a replacement outfit at the 11th hour... even if I did have to drive to the back of whoop whoop to pick it up!

It's a rainbow glow bug, I think. We'll it's cute whatever it is! (Poggie not in costume at this point)

Rainbow bug and his Papa Bear - make sure you check the Bears for more pics and news

Halloween loot for just one child o_0

Our church also does a lovely and very moving day of the dead celebration where members bring photos and stories of people they want to remember.

Altar of remembrance

Finally, to wrap up all this celebrating death/life we popped down to First Friday, which is a arts/beer festival in Southtown, the San Antonio arts district. This particular first Friday included a day of the dead parade as well as a Muertitos Fest!

We started First Friday with drinks, fried mushrooms and jalapeno poppers at our favourite Texan icehouse, La Tuna. We met up with friends and their little girl Camille and then headed down to Muertitos Fest at Say Si, arguably our favorite gallery in San Antonio. Say Si is a student art program but the quality of the work is excellent, as you will see in a moment.

Some of the incredible altars at Say Si

More altars. Call it my Catholic roots but I love these!

Some of the artwork. Hard to tell from the pic but these were gorgeous.

This was our favourite piece by far and we would definitely have bought it if it hadn't already sold! It is a combo of found paper, block printing, woodwork and resin.

After we'd checkout out the artwork we popped outside to catch some of the traditional dancing, including this incredible routine where they danced with real candles on their heads!

After that we did catch the parade, but my photos suck so if you want to see better ones check out the Bears.

Day of the dead parade at Say Si

And of course we dressed Rooey for the occasion so that everybody stopped to goo over him!