he ran into my knife ten times.

Things that happened this weekend:

• I battled a Mysterious Illness (I tested negative for strep and mono) that made me feel like my throat was being ripped to shreds.
• We celebrated a belated Christmas on my dad's side of the family for my cousin and his girlfriend.
• A new (albeit incredibly second-hand-embarrassing) family joke was developed.
• I traveled to all the drugstores and dollar stores in the area and could not find a police badge for E's costume.
  
• I baked two batches of cookies and a couple dozen red velvet cupcakes.
• Target had colorful tights on clearance and I had to stop myself from buying a pair in every single color.
• Melissa hosted a kick-ass Oscar Watching-slash-Costume Party. See her recap here.
• My hooker boots made their return and were actually appropriate for the occasion - my costume (we had to dress from a previously-awarded Best Picture film):
  
  
  
  One of the six merry murderesses of Cook County Jail (from Chicago).
  {picture stolen from Melissa}
  
  
• I won the ballot contest, which is kind of a miracle because I hadn't seen any of the movies on the list and guessed (pretty hastily) on most things. I also beat E by just one point; he's not happy about it.
• Wine consumption.
• I had the ever-awkward "oh hey I have a blog" conversation with E. Doubly awkward? He'd already been reading without my knowledge. I wanted to melt into the floor.
• E and I stayed up way too late talking, which was good and bad - good because of the conversations we were having, bad because they were happening at four in the morning.

So, how was your weekend?

halloweekend.

Oh, Monday. I'm sad to see you after such a fun holiday weekend. But! I'm glad it's the start of a new month and time to start preparing for yet another holiday. Before I go all gung-ho about Thanksgiving, though, let's recap my weekend.

Friday. On Thursday night, my bestest, Natalie, called to let me know she’d be in the area to support her friend who was in a local production of The Crucible, and that Danielle (our other bestest) was also (shockingly!) free. It doesn’t happen often that we’re all available at the same time, so I immediately said yes.

The play was really fantastic – Nat’s friend played John Proctor and was amazing – and the small assembly room we were in was low-lit and decorated in a Halloween-ish fashion. Of course, the best part was that I got to play catch up with my girls and see Nat’s engagement ring in person.

Saturday. I ended up sleeping in late by accident, so I spent the afternoon setting out the pieces of my costume and cleaning my room. After dinner I got down to baking, starting with Halloween-themed brownies and following up with cinnamon apples. Unfortunately, the apples didn’t turn out right because I didn’t add enough brown sugar, so I’ll have to try the recipe again next week sometime. The brownies, however, were delicious as always and were quickly consumed.

I guess I was in a movie-watching mood, because not only did I catch Beetlejuice on TV but I watched Zombieland on Netflix Instant Watch with my mom and brother. Beetlejuice is my favorite Halloween movie – my favorite part is the dinner scene when they all start dancing. We watched Zombieland on a whim and it was fantastic. It was so funny and well-done, and being the girly girl that I am, I loved the little romantic storyline. At the end when he finally got to brush a girl’s hair behind her ear (and kiss her, of course), I swooned a little bit.

Sunday. As I posted yesterday, I dressed up as Katy Perry to answer the door and hand out candy. With the exception of one small group of teens, the entirety of our trick-or-treaters were here in the afternoon, before dinnertime. I was surprised people weren’t out later, but I guess it was easier to go out in daylight.

Some of the better costumes included a girl dressed as Blossom (of the Powerpuff Girls, of course) and a teenage boy dressed in my high school’s uniform. I was taken off-guard because I didn’t see the costumes before I handed the candy out, but then I recognized the sweater immediately and realized he was in full uniform. It was great!

We ended up with a lot of extra candy because my mom thought we’d have tons more trick-or-treaters. It’s totally past an acceptable amount of leftovers, which means we’ll be eating it for weeks (or we’ll eat it all really fast and get sick and fat). I lounged around for the remainder of the evening and watched The Walking Dead mainly because there was nothing else on. It was pretty good – I’m not a zombie fan in particular, but I enjoyed it. I don’t watch anything else on Sunday nights, so I may tune in regularly.

Now I'm pretty much just recovering from sugar overload and trying to figure out how I'm going to stop myself from binging on chocolate for the next week. This isn't going to be pretty.

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween, lovely readers of mine!

I hope you're having a wonderful day. It's gorgeous weather here, if not a bit chilly, so we're already getting trick-or-treaters at 2pm (mostly the smallest, cutest ones so far).

Anyway, I've got a football game to finish watching (J-E-T-S!) and some tea to drink, so without further ado, here I am in full costume for today!


Full costume (please ignore my fairly messy room).


Close up!

Love, Katy [Cait]y Perry

ready for halloween.

This weekend was dedicated to preparing for Halloween. I shopped for my costume, perused the seasonal section of Target for some goodies, and put together the candy bags for trick-or-treaters. It was an all-around productive weekend.

I finally took a pick-and-stick attitude about what I wanted to be and went on a search for all things Katy Perry. Because it was difficult to replicate the looks from ‘California Gurls’ without spending a lot of cash, I made the decision to find a wig and a Katy-esque outfit. Considering I don’t have any plans and will just be answering the door, I figured it wasn’t worth going overboard.

The hardest piece to find was the wig. I wanted to go for what Katy’s most well-known for, which is blue hair. After searching the pop-up Halloween store and finding nothing, I ended up at Party City but still couldn’t find blue. I was stuck between purple and pink. Purple probably would’ve been a better choice in terms of authenticity – I don’t think I’ve really seen Katy with pink hair – but I went with pink anyway. I had already found an absolutely ridiculous pink-accented leopard-print top at the mall (on the clearance rack, shocker) and besides, I outfit myself in pink whenever possible, why should Halloween be any different?

On Saturday I got to work on the Halloween hand-outs. With the exception of the past four years when I was at college, we always put together and hand out small bags of candy. I decided to bring it back this year because, I mean, who wouldn’t want multiple pieces of candy from one house? I remember getting the little bags and thinking JACKPOT.

So much candy, om nom nom.

Finished products!

Plus, this way, we have lots of variety in our leftovers and we can start eating them as soon as the bags are done, instead of waiting for Halloween to be over. It’s a win-win, really.

Even though I’ll just be settling in for a quiet Halloween weekend, I’m still really excited. Dressing up is one of my absolute favorite things to do and, for some reason, I just love handing out candy.

What are your plans for Halloween? What are you dressing up as?

happy halloween!

I absolutely love Halloween. Mainly for the free candy, but also because I love to dress up. I could definitely do without the scary stuff, but I don't mind it in moderation. Plus, I feel like it's the unofficial start to the holiday season.

Trick-or-treating was my activity of choice until sophomore year of college. Yes, COLLEGE. I continued to go throughout high school, I skipped freshmen year, but in sophomore year, a bunch of my friends still wanted to do it. And how can I pass up free candy? Sure, I could go buy my own bag, but unless you're going to shell out lots of cash, you're only going to get a limited variety. By going out, you get everything you could imagine and more. I remember dumping my bucket out and finding candy I totally forgot existed or that I simply didn't eat very often. It was amazing.

My junior and senior years didn't include trick-or-treating only because I hosted a party one year and attended one the following year. Our junior year party was pretty last-minute because we all wanted to go out, but not to drink (I know, we're not your typical college students). So, we hosted our own party which included pizza, snacks, and amazing brownies. We had thirteen people total, talked really loudly and got in trouble, then crowded into one of our rooms to watch Casper. It was a lot of fun, actually.

Our little common area, decked out for the party. We even had SUPER ILLEGAL STRING LIGHTS.

I guess now that I won't be trick-or-treating until I have kids of my own (yikes!), my favorite part of Halloween is definitely dressing up. In case you couldn't guess, I was Tinkerbell for our junior year party. Last year (my senior year) I was a black cat.

However, my favorite costume of all time was none other than being a Disney princess. I had only been a fairy princess when I was four years old, and had otherwise gone in the direction of whatever was popular (like the year I was the Pink Power Ranger when everyone else was too).

I can't say the idea was exactly all mine. My best friend at the time decided she wanted to be Maleficent, the evil witch from Sleeping Beauty. It was our senior year of high school, which meant we were the only ones allowed to dress up for the annual class parties. Since I had always wanted to do theme-y costumes with friends, I immediately decided I would be Aurora. Originally we tried to get our friends to be other Disney princesses and villains, but everyone already had other ideas.

Being Princess Aurora was the best time I've ever had on Halloween. I can't tell if it comes across in my blog, but I was born to be a Disney princess, no lie. Princess Cait was actually my nickname of sorts in high school (hence the URL to this blog - ou, fun fact!). I mean, nobody ever called me that in any seriousness, like yelling down the hallway for me. It was mostly just online screen name material and for joking around. Needless to say, I am the perfect candidate for dressing like a princess.

What was your favorite costume for Halloween? What's your favorite part of Halloween in general?