We had a fun Halloween in Lake Charles. One of my bosses who volunteers there watched Ellie for us while we went through a haunted ship. It was pretty scary! I screamed ALOT. Joe and I were in a group with three others, two were 13 or so, and they begged us to go first because they were scared. My reaction? NO WAY.
It makes me wonder what my reaction would be if there were a zombie apocalypse and two young teenagers needed me to kill a zombie to save them... NOPE! Sorry kids, you're on your own!
Joe was Buckethead. Creepy, huh?
I went as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark! Ellie was my black kitty.
If I were an excellent blogger I would have already done a photoshoot of a coordinated family costume, all made by hand of course, with thrifted items and things from my closet. I would never have gone to the Halloween store and purchased costumes from a bag or shake-and-go wig! What kind of person would I be??
I should have a display area in my home where I have stylishly placed hand painted pumpkins, Halloween related artwork and a bowl of caramels made from scratch. I should have shared hot cider recipes and pumpkin-flavored-everything recipes! What would you think of me if I told you I haven't touched a can of pumpkin puree or even considered roasting a pumpkin this year?
What I AM doing to get in the spirit is listening to a nice gothic themed playlist (lots of The Cure) and watching Halloween movies (including American Horror Story!! This season is pretty good so far, am I right?)
Last weekend we dove an hour to the closest town with a costume store and picked up some stuff. My dream Halloween costume for the family was to be characters from Labyrinth. I would be Sarah, Ellie would be Toby and Joe wanted to be Ludo (there is an awesome DIY Ludo costume on Insructables here... I just don't have the time to make it!)
Instead of Labyrinth costumes we are going to be separate characters. I'm going as Elvira and Ellie will be my black cat. Joe is going as Buckethead, the guitarist. I would have put a lot more effort into costumes if I knew we would have a party to go to or an event to be at. The problem with moving around so much is that you never have friends who throw parties! We will be going to a skate competition and maybe a haunted ship in the town over from us.
Halloween is one of those holidays I LOVE, but it can get so expensive and become so time consuming to do it right. Then sometimes you spend all that time on a costume and you have nowhere to go in it! I've never been a hostess type, but I would love to one day throw a Halloween party.
We put kitty in a little costume as the trick or treaters started showing up. She really didn't like it! Anytime she successfully took it off Joe put it right back on. Poor Kitty! She looks like a Babushka Lady doesn't she? She is an old lady cat, after all.
Our Halloween is going well. We watched Night of the Living Dead and will probably watch another horror movie before the night is over.
After all the time and money we spent on our costumes we only got to wear them for the Halloween party at work, in which I spent the entire time making balloon animals. We didn't even have time for a good photo! I am currently suffering through a 24 hour shift which ends in 3 hours. First on the list is sleep, followed by possibly making all the alien cake pops I intended to make for another party that didn't happen. Then we get to light our pumpkin and hand out candy!
Happy Halloween!
xoxo - Special Agents Dana Scully & Fox Mulder, FBI
One thing about being long distance from your spouse for so long is that you can't celebrate holidays together. Last year Joe came to Alaska for Christmas, and even though I'm not a big Christmas person, I went "all out" as much as I could so we could have a nice first Christmas as a family. This year we actually get to celebrate Halloween together! No flights, no paperwork so I can take leave, no trying to live out of a hotel or house sitting for someone else. Just us and kitty in our little apartment carving pumpkins. I think kitty liked the smell of pumpkin guts because she kept coming over to sniff it.
This is going to be the only major holiday we can spend together in our little apartment, seeing as we are supposed to be moving by December. We are just waiting for the paperwork to come through so we can know for sure. I hope it works out! I'm tired of Alaska and I want to have our road trip to California because it will be our last trip before the bear cub is born! We will most likely be living in a hotel by Thanksgiving and still on the road by Christmas and New Years.
I can't wait to have a house of our own in New York so we can host our own Halloween parties! No one around here ever throws any and it depresses me. I can't wait to make glittery decorations and hot cider, donuts, pumpkin martinis and little pumpkin painting stations for the kids! I think this calls for a Pinterest board!
Once again I got to spend my work day figuring out and also teaching everyone else how to make balloon animals. Tomorrow is the Halloween party and I'm excited about dressing up! Joe and I are going as Agent Scully and Mulder from the X-Files. Joe is a big Sci-Fi fan and while we were long distance we watched almost every episode of the X-Files together over Skype. Just not season nine... season nine was terrible. I think we are happy with the costume choice. Maybe I can get him to take some really cheesy photos like thisand this!
It was a little difficult to convince Joe to dress up, as he wanted me to make a really elaborate Ludo costume from Labyrinth for him so I could be Sarah. Perhaps in the future we can do Labyrinth and make the bear cub dress as Toby! Of course it would be SO AWESOME if I could make Joe dress like the Goblin King instead, but I think that's asking too much!
I took some little iPhone shots of all the balloons we experimented with since there usually isn't much color happening in the office on a day to day basis. It's usually, you know, green. I was also very proud of my duck which I made especially for my husband.
These are my Christmas/Halloween/St Patrick's Day/Gay Pride cupcakes! I hate having holiday themed stuff around my house. It's fun to have around the time of the holiday, but immediately after I'm thinking, "What am I gonna do with this NOW? It's just taking up space." I had Halloween cupcake liners just laying around, green frosting in the fridge and Christmas sprinkles. I figured adding a little Gay Pride would make these cupcakes all inclusive!
I really love how the colors came out. The teal especially. Does anyone know the secret to purple food coloring? I can't seem to keep it from looking like mud.
Happy Halloween everyone! This year I went as Alex from A Clockwork Orange. I didn't get any fabulous pictures of my costume, but I snapped a few of my makeup, which is the best part of the costume anyway! I've been messing with some iPhone photo apps lately. So far I'm loving Labelbox and Pic Stitch. I tried out Spooky Pics for my Halloween photos...
I made some orange and purple Halloween cupcakes for the party. They got eaten up really fast! I'm not an expert at baking yet, but I was pretty happy with these. The frosting is the hardest part. I had to resist buying the cupcake icing kits from Target and settled on using ziplock bags for piping the icing.
I also snapped a bunch of photos with my Instax. I'll be putting together my Zombie Mini Album soon! The party was full of zombies, pirates, 80's metal rockers, 70's coke heads, serial killer butchers, and of course a bit of the old 'ultra violence.'
On another note, last Wednesday I got my tattoo! It was drawn by Mindy Massacre at Primal Instincts Tattoo in Anchorage AK. I made an appointment to get it colored in two weeks. I love how it turned out! I heard that she and another female artist were fighting over who would get to do my tattoo, because they both loved the idea of the dress form. The sewing stuff is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, who left me her sewing room when she passed away. She always made tons of great stuff! I have a purse she made and I carry it everywhere. The butterfly on the dress-form's shoulder is for my paternal grandmother, who used to do a butterfly census at the UCSC Arboretum in Santa Cruz, CA. She would walk around and see how many butterflies were in the gardens and figure out what types they were. I'm going to get some flowers in the background for her too... Maybe some from this book that my aunt made of her artwork after she passed away. She did some wonderful drawings! Anywhere she went she would draw, she didn't bother taking photos.
Last but not least is an update on my knitting progress... I had 24 hour duty the morning after the Halloween party, which sucked, but at least I had some time to catch up on my knitting. It started snowing yesterday morning and I thought to myself, "You'd better get that sweater done!" I started it last year but I kept putting it down to work on other projects. Now that it's cold out I'll need it!
The Fall 2010 issue of Vogue Knitting is still the best issue I've seen. They were on point with the London Calling collection. I may even make two of these pullovers!
I chose a grey yarn that was too dark in comparison to the original pattern, but I like how it is turning out.
That's all for now! Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the October Followers Fest! I'll leave you with a video for the lovely song "Dear Darkness" by PJ Harvey. She's a wonderful singer/songwriter and very "goth". Perfect for this time of year.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
