Our Spookiest, Coolest House (Again!)

It's still light out when I took the pictures, but you can at least see the red light in the background and the fog machine working. Too bad you can't see the pumpkin light & flickering window light & strobe light. Andy also added lights to focus on the sign.

People told Andy that we had the spookiest porch in town (exactly!) and there were many kids who were too scared to come up the porch and made the adults with them come up with. He also had spooky music playing too, plus he was sitting in the corner wearing his costume (see below!) I can't wait until we can decorate our porch again next year, most of these decorations can be reused, so next year we can just buy a few more things.

Halloween 2010

This was the most fun Halloween I have had in a long time. The top collage is from Saturday night where I went out with 5 other moms (and 1 dad - not pictured) and did a bar hopping for Halloween. We had so much fun dancing & laughing and checking out everyone's costumes. We definitely have to do this every year.

Friday night, my friend Caitlin & I made a practice run to a bar downtown. Well, actually, we were supposed to go to a Halloween theatre variety show and we decided it would be fun to dress up, but due to some last minute scheduling difficulties she couldn't get a sitter & her husband had to work late, so we couldn't make it in time. But why waste a fun costume (she was Peggy Bundy & I was a disgruntled goth bridemaid - shredded a dress I wore 14 years ago) so we went to check out a bar (neither of us ever goes down town to the bars, so we just picked one) and it they had karaoke. I was super excited because I used to love to go sing karaoke (not any good, but I still have fun!) and I have not gone out for that since before I was pregnant with my daughter. So, it's been a while. I sang "Wide Open Spaces" by the Dixie Chicks and "This Love' by Maroon 5 by myself and together we sang "Just a Friend" by Biz Markie and "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. I finally got her to sing her own song "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. It was her first time singing karaoke and she had a good time & asked to go again.

My husband is not the dress up type, but our daughter was pestering him to dress up and he was staying home to pass out candy on our spooky porch (the fog machine is going in these pics). So he agreed to wear exactly what he was wearing & add a mask. I thought it was pretty creepy, even with how simple it was.

Here are the kids in one of their halloween costumes. Each of them had two. My daughter's costumes were a witch and a fairy. My sons costumes were a pumpkin and a mouse.

Our Spookiest, Coolest House

Well, we had planned to do a lot of our own decorations and much of these are (5 pumpkin/ghost leaf bags, ghosts in the trees, flying ghost on porch, skeleton scarecrow, plastic hangings of witch & warewolf, small ghosts hanging from porch, glow in the dark ghost by the door, scarecrow wreath, glow in the dark stars on ceiling of porch, glow in the dark skeleton, pumpkin & carved pumpkins, & homemade window decorations, but then we got picked by SheSpeaks to be a Snickers Coolest House.

This is such an awesome sampling opportunity. They sent me bags & bags & bags of candy. 2/3 of the bags are of the new Snickers bar, Snickers Squared and the other 1/3 is of regular Snickers. There are 300 pieces of candy in all. So, these are being passed out on Halloween and at our Halloween parties this week.

They also sent us a bag of spider webs, a big banner to hang up, some window clings, some "warning" tape, a strobe light and a fog machine. During the day you can't see the strobe light and it was too windy to have the fog machine going. But come Halloween when I add our own colored light to the porch, turned on the fog machine & strobe light, we are going to have the spookiest porch in the whole town.

My daughter has been so pumped about all of this. She loved decorating the porch and then to decorate it even more was a treat. I can't wait to see her face when the lights & fog are added.

Also, I have to add that, you can only get this new Snicker candy bar, Snickers Squared, and the houses chosen for the sampling program. They won't be available to buy until this winter.

So, if you live in my area, stop on by and check out our spooky porch and come try out the new Snickers Squared. Or maybe you are lucky enough to be at one of our Halloween parties and will get one there.

New Hair Color

Last night my colorist friend, Caitlin, played kitchen beautician with me and made me very blond & very straight. The blond is permanent, the straightness is not (just blow out & flat iron.) Normally she just does color at her job & someone else does the styling, but she really wanted to style my hair too since her daughter (one of DD's little friends) never lets her do her hair, she never gets to play with hair after she has colored it. And then we took it a step further & she did my makeup too so that the before & after pictures (taken with phone) would have the maximum impact. My before picture looks kinda straight, but that is because I had just taken it out of a ponytail (which flatten the top half against my head.

My daughter likes that I have blond hair like her now. Although, she's been begging me to straighten her hair this morning.

My poor son didn't recognize me this morning when I went to get him out of his crib. I had to say a few things before he would put his arms out to me to pick him up. He just kept giving this weird look until he knew it was me.

I like the blond. Although, with such a dramatic change to blond AND straight it almost seems like I am wearing a wig. In a couple weeks, we are going to take it one step further and make it a little sassy & add a hot pink streak. But for now, it's just blond because we have family pictures coming up and I wanted just blond for that. Now I have to decide if I want her to dye my actual hair pink or weave in an extension.

With an extension, the hair is artificial and the color will stay as long as the extension stays in, but the curl will be hard to match with mine. Plus, I have never had a weave put in, what's that feel like? Is it hard to comb by it? Does feel weird on my head? If we go with my actual hair and dye it, the color will fade but it will be my natural hair & curl & nothing extra on my head. Decisions, decisions....

The Cheese Cave

We got a sitter for the girls & took our friends out to the Cheese Cave. We really enjoy the atmosphere, food & wine there. In addition to our wine (Andy switched to beer later), we had 2 different cheese platters (each with 3 different cheeses, strawberries, dried cranberries, water crackers, candied cashews & chocolates on it), assorted olives, dried salami rolled in herbs, & rosemary crackers.

The boy didn't make the picture, but you can see his sippy cup there and no that he was there.

We had a good time there and out friend enjoyed it. We had hoped they would, because this was right up their alley in terms of food interests.

My 2nd 5K

My friend Lori came to visit with her family and we had planned to run a 5K together. I was glad I ran with her because she pushed me to finish with a pace under a 10-min mile. In fact, it was 9:47 min mile pace that we had. The course was just under 3.1, but I did factor that in with my pace time, otherwise my pace would have looked REALLY awesome to me.

Still have no desire to run anything more than a 5K race. No runner's high here. :(

I am thinking about running a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, but I am not sure how I feel about the cold. I run inside on a treadmill. So, we'll see. I might just wait to register that day if it feels ok. Although, I was talking with another mom in our playgroup about doing our own turkey trot (no t-shirts or entry fee, just a playgroup event for the moms.