Speaking of playing hide and seek... I bought this Grumpy Cat for my husband several Easters ago as part of a scavenger hunt to cheer him up. Since then this plush has also been hidden around the house in a myriad of locations. My favorite was when I hid him in the kitchen cupboard, and my husband, in his half-awake stupor, opened the cabinet door, grabbed out a cereal bowl, closed the cabinet door, stopped, opened back up the cabinet door, and *then* burst out laughing as it finally registered.

Here he is "hidden" among the tabletop RPG books, plotting evil things to befall our characters.

My husband also had to go on business trips with his last job, so if his carry on bag was big enough, I would sneak Grumpy Cat inside as a stowaway. On this particular trip he was only taking a change of clothes in a messenger bag, so I took a photograph of Grumpy Cat attempting to fit inside, printed out the photo on computer paper, wrote "Wish we could go with you! Love, Wiffy and Grumpy Cat ::heart::" at the bottom, hid the printout in his bag in the folder with his travel documents, and clipped a "Secret Note inside, open with care. ::heart::" post-it to the outside of the folder.

This will always be the best note he has ever left for me.
If you don't understand it, watch this.

[doodle of Nyan Cat, but in place of the cat face it has his beardy face saying "mwah!"]

[pencil doodle of a cat face saying "Meow!", with text ""Meow" means "I love you" in cat talk"]

Here are two joke maps.

The first is from a D&D game my husband ran several years ago: As play progressed, he slowly unveiled what awaited us in the Tower of Horrors, yet at the end of the first play session we still had a large chunk of the map left unexplored. I decided to preemptively fill in the blank areas with things such as a secret door leading to the Bifröst, a tarp ("It's a tarp!"), an in-game reference to Sam & Max's "Just You And Me (And Ted E. Bear)", a day spa complete with a rubber duck filled bubble bath and a half-giant sized massage table, and a room full of magical kittens. We ultimately got none of those things.

I don't know why I drew this second map, or what it was in reference to, but it also has secret kittens. Other highlights include an area with a save point and no enemies, an area one does not go, certain doom, lots of big treasure, and one place with "Ehh, okay treasure, I guess..."

A series of images from his 31st birthday, in which I pulled out all the stops. I set up an elaborate treasure hunt, I decorated with the finest accessories the Dollar Store had to offer, and I had a grand surprise waiting for him at the end of the trail.

(click images to view full size)

top row, left to right
1. Two notes hang under the "Happy Place" sign on our front door:
A birthday hunt awaits you here. 6 gifts are hidden somewhere near. Follow clues around the house until you find your loving spouse.

Clue #1: Though small I'll catch your cares with ease. Start out where you rest your keys.

2. The first prize is a small ceramic trinket dish resting on his bedside table. It is inscribed, "pray more. worry less."
Clue #2: No need for Travelocity where I roam, I'm in the guest room of your home.

3. The next gift is a gnome plush with a big hat and super long legs, lounging on top of the guest bed.
Clue #3: You'll never miss us in the dark. We're prowling where you keep your Quark. (the cheese, not the ferengi)

4. Gift three is a bundle of various glow in the dark dinosaur toys including one Grow and Glow figurine, and a two-pack of dinosaur bone model kits. I wrapped them in tissue paper and hid them in the fridge.
Clue #4: DASH now to the TV screen. There I'll greet you "bween, bween, bweeeeen!"

bottom row, left to right
1. On top of the TV is perched treasure four, an imported figurine of Tron Bonne using a servbot as a chair.
Clue #5: In the top drawer by your computer, waits a litter than couldn't be cuter.

2. The next prize, found in his computer desk drawer, is a package of holographic kitten stickers.
Clue #6: In the office a treasure find. Learn to see what once was blind.

{insert minor explanatory detour}
The whole time he had been on an adventure quest around the house, I had been silently hiding in my office with The Big Gift.

As many of you know, my husband is colorblind. He considers it his only party trick, but I know there are times he wishes he could see the intricacies and vibrancy in color that everyone else around him experiences. So I bought him a set of EnChroma glasses, which aid in filtering color perception for people with colorblindness, often allowing them to experience certain hues for the first time. I was expecting them to blow his mind.

Unfortunately, the glasses did not end up doing as much as I'd hoped. While certain things, like his plaid shirts, registered as noticeably different, it was more of a "Huh, that's kind of cool. This shirt looks less dull than usual" and not a tearful "Green! I can see green! Look at this shirt! Have you ever seen a more wonderful shirt in all creation?!" Most things looked more or less the same. Sadly, we ultimately ended up returning the glasses at the end of the trial period because we just couldn't justify the price tag for the little they did for his specific condition.
{end detour}

3.+4. Long view and closeup of the party decorations. I splurged on every bright and colorful thing I could find, hoping to give him plenty of fodder for his new glasses to soak in: multi-colored paper stars, paper streamers, a hot pink princess tablecloth, rainbow candles, two different Happy Birthday banners, a hoard of balloons, and a generous smattering of dice. Even though the glasses didn't work out, we had fun pelting each other with balloons for the next few weeks.

[pen/pencil drawing of a cat peaking up from the bottom of the page to say "Hi!"]

I made sure this posted on the proper day of the week.

[digital drawing of Grumpy Cat in a party hat, blowing on a party horn, thinking "Yay. Monday."]

Speaking of things I leave on his computer for him to find, here is an example of other dumb things I do to surprise him...

The next 11 days I will be sharing art from Drawlloween 2015. *Technically* I didn't create any of them for my husband or his lunches, but he *did* help me brainstorm ideas, and I *did* excitedly run up and show them off to him after I finished each one like a kid who hopes their efforts will be impressive enough to put on the refrigerator, so he says they can count as additional posts here.

Before that, though, here are some celebratory pictures from Halloweens of yore to help put you in an appropriately spooky mood.

[two photographs of a pumpkin with a cat face carved into it]

[photograph of a carved turnip face with its tongue sticking out, and with leafy growth that looks like hair]

Lastly, here is a photo of a graveyard cake I made for our D&D group. I can't take credit for the pun names, though. Those came from a Google search.

[the cake has five Oreo crumble loose graves surrounded by piped gel frosting grass, with candy bones popping up through the "dirt." the headstones read "Hugh B. Next," "Barry D. Hatchet," "Dee Cayed," "Ricky T. Bones," and "Myra Mains."]