halloweenie 2011

[shane as the white swan and me as the black swan]

[hoover as wildred and sarah as an indian]

this year I decided to dress up as Black Swan for Halloween! to complete the look, i needed to find someone to be my alter ego, the white swan. luckily, one of my best guy friends jumped on being the White Swan and called dibs less than one minute after making a request on Facebook. gotta love Shane Gallas. 

before hitting the dance floor ballerina style friday night, we needed to make and put together our costumes. shane wore white tights, a white tutu, a SUPER deep white v-neck shirt from american apparel. and a feather head piece i made for him (basically icing on top of the swan cake)! i wore pink tights, ballet shoes, a black leotard and tutu, a crown i spray painted black, and a black bra over the tutu i covered with feathers using a hot glue gun. to finish the look, i used water proof eye liner and gold eyeliner for my black swan eye decals. 

...and voila! the swans are born!

other stand-outs i saw friday night night: Hoover as Wildred from the FX show "Wildred, a guy dressed up as a mammogram (wish I had a picture), a group of my guy friends dressed up as robots (full on robot suits), Mike Masenga as a Ghost Buster, and plethora of zombie brides. 

on actual Halloween I'm planning on keeping it mellow by playing board games at Alex Curry's house and passing out candy. Happy Halloween ya'll! What are you dressing up as? Are their aspects of your costume you made?

black cat superstitions

When we think of Halloween, visions of ghosts, goblins, jack o' lanterns, cob webs, zombies, and witches and their cat companions swirl in our heads and haunt us in our sleep (or at Knott's Scary Farm like the other night!).

We can all thank Halloween lore and religious persecution for leading people to be overly superstitious of black cats. Take this tale from British feline lore for example:

In Lincolnshire in the 1560s, a father and his son were frightened one moonless night when a small creature darted across their path into a crawl space. Hurling stones into the opening, they saw an injured black cat scurry out and limp into the adjacent home of a woman suspected by the town of being a witch. Next day, the father and son encountered the woman on the street. Her face was bruised, her arm bandaged. And she now walked with a limp. From that day on in Lincolnshire, all black cats were suspected of being witches in night disguise. The lore persisted. The notion of witches transforming themselves into black cats in order to prowl streets unobserved became a central belief in America during the Salem witch hunts. Thus, an animal once looked on with approbation became a creature dreaded and despised. 

Read more black cat superstitions here.

Dreaded and despised??! Eek! Does this little guy resemble anything having to do with evil?....

Yeah, I thought not. Rasta does not have an evil bone in his body! In fact, three words to describe Rasta would be skittish (he's extremely terrified of the sound of tin foil), intelligent (he can open doors), and spacey (he does a good job at leaving food residue all over his face post meal time). Even though Rasta is the farthest thing from evil, we still gotta protect the little bugger from psychos and potential harm on and around Halloween!

BOO! grams

What in the world is a BOO! gram? A BOO! gram is an annual tradition and friendly way to celebrate the Halloween holiday by doorbell-ditching and leaving a sweet treat for your friends!

What do you include in a BOO! gram? In our BOO! gram, we included 4 things: 1) A boo bag full of Halloween themed goodies (The boys and I filled 3 baggies with glow in the dark bracelets, a skull egg filled with skittles, Starburst and Hersey's chocolate candies, and fruit snacks...my way to include a touch of health haha), 2) The actual BOO! gram which is usually a picture of a ghost that says "Boo! We Got You!" It could look something like this or this, 3) A Halloween poem, and 4) Instructions for BOO! gramming other people. Below is a picture of our final BOO! gram.

[boo bag of goodies, boo gram with halloween poem and instructions (behind)]

How does it work? We'll there are a few steps involved in BOO! gram making. First, create your boo bag of goodies (something like this), BOO! gram picture, Halloween poem, and instructions. Next, assemble the BOO! gram. Once assembled, its time to pick a few unsuspecting friends to BOO. The boys chose to boo a few of their closest friends. Finally, make the drop, ring the doorbell, and RUN FOR IT!!

[making the drop]

[running for it!!]

Funny story on our bag drop excursion: The boys and I were dropping off the last bag at their friend Ryan's house. As Christian was running up the path to Ryan's house, Ryan's mom comes running out of the house telling Christian not to BOO! them because they had already been boo'ed twice. I politely shouted "Who cares? It's all fun and games!" She wasn't having any of it, so instead of pushing it further (even though I really wanted to) I lassoed Christian back into the car, bummed and confused. On my toes, I had to quickly come up with a game plan for the last bag. I suggested that we BOO! one of my best friends. Christian loved the idea and before we knew it, we were back in the game and Christian was on the edge of his seat anxiously waiting to make the last drop at one of MY friends houses. We were successful. Alex texted me a shortly after with a simple "BOO!" I showed Christian the text and with a smile from ear to ear he said, "We got her!" Ahh, the simple joy of boyhood pranks :)