2015 Recap, Part II.

This is Part II of my recap of 2015 - find Part I here.

From September through the end of the year, I felt like I was on rollercoaster plummeting down a huge drop. (Or, at least that what I imagine it felt like, since I’ve never actually been on a rollercoaster). What I mean is, life went FULL SPEED AHEAD for the last three months of the year. Erik and I attended an awesome Halloween party and dressed as Wendy Peffercorn and Squints from The Sandlot. I don’t even remember November other than moving Erik’s parents into their new house and celebrating Thanksgiving at my parents’ house.

The period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas felt short, rushed, and overall disappointing. There were good moments, like buying our first Christmas tree and decorations for our apartment. But I didn’t do much baking like I usually do, and I didn’t really spend time with anyone except Erik’s friends for our ugly sweater party. I don’t know if it was the weather (it was super warm in November and December, so it felt more like spring) or not being in my parents’ house for the Christmas season, but I felt underwhelmed. Christmas itself, along with New Year's Eve, were low-key and I didn't feel my usual giddiness. I was also exhausted from an insane two weeks at work during this time, which didn't help with my holiday spirit.

The first week of the new year never truly feels like the new year because I’m still celebrating through to my birthday on January 8 (one week past New Year’s Day). This year was a little different in that I wasn’t celebrating my birthday in any way, other than getting some gifts from Erik. Instead, this year my youngest cousin on my mom’s side of the family got married on January 9, this past Saturday. It’s a long, somewhat crazy story, but the short version is that it was planned in three months and has been the focus of my mom’s family’s attention for that time. It was a beautiful wedding and we all had a fun time - and, if you know me at all, you know I love weddings in any capacity. For me, though, it was also a finish line. I finally felt like my year was over. My stressful time at work was over, the holidays were over, and now my birthday and the big wedding were over.

So here I am, back to life on my terms. Back to a life not filled with three-week stretches of carefully scheduled days and constant anxiety. Back to focusing my energy on what I want to be doing. One of those things, I’ve decided, is connection with people. This includes diving back into blogging and connections through blogging, because I miss it. Here's to 2016!

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

my history with pumpkin carving.

Twitter and the blogosphere have been buzzing with Halloween-type activities, including the ever-popular pumpkin picking and carving. As I scrolled through posts and clicked on picture links that had been tweeted, I realized the number of times I actually laid hands on (or in) a pumpkin was very small. In fact, after some careful research – flipping through old photo albums – I came up with an exact number: two.

1993, 6 years old.
This one barely even counts, since my dad probably did 99.99% of the work.
(Also? Matching haircuts! That my dad did! And I cried! /hate)

Yes, there have only been two times in my life (at least that I can remember and/or have been documented) that we carved pumpkins in this house. And, as far as I know, I’ve never set foot in an actual pumpkin patch. The closest thing I’ve done is gone on a haunted hayride.

1997, 10 years old.
I can safely say that the only reason I carved this one was because it was a Girl Scout or Boy Scout project.
(To clarify, the reason it could also be a Boy Scout project is because my mom was den mother, so I got to take part in all the cool craft projects).

Needless to say, for the past few years I kept meaning to at least go over to Shoprite and pick up a pumpkin, but it never happened. I even bought a kit that I thought was cool – it wasn’t to carve the pumpkin, but instead turn it into a Light Brite-type display. After passing over the kit for at least three years now, I decided it was time. I picked up a medium-sized pumpkin to use with the kit and three baby ones to decorate with my yet-to-be-used Martha Stewart glitter set.

My camera died right as I was getting started, so I there aren't any 'before' pictures or ones of me pulling the insides out of the pumpkin. To summarize the experience, I didn't realize how hard it is to cut through the pumpkin, had fun gutting the pumpkin, was unsure of how good the end result was going to luck, and completely forgot that the light that comes with the kit I bought changes colors. Here are the results.

My bat, which was the only decent-looking stencil from the kit.


My fiber-optic pumpkin in action!


Glitter pumpkin!


Spotty glitter pumpkin!

Overall I'm very pleased (read: extremely giddy). Any craft project that includes glitter is automatically amazing in my book, and the fiber-optic-type kit that I used ended up being really cool!

I'll be back on Sunday with a picture of me in my costume, but until then, have a fabulous Halloween-y weekend!

bullet lists, how i love thee.

• Sometimes I have a dream I love so much that it keeps me happy for the rest of the day. Like, I'll just stop what I'm doing and remember it and it brings a smile to my face. This probably means I'm a humongous weirdo.
  
  
• I'm preparing a post about how I haven't carved a pumpkin since I was like, ten and how I don't think I've ever actually set foot in a pumpkin patch. I feel supremely deprived, which is why I'm finally getting a pumpkin (from Shoprite).
  
  
• While Ash, Cort and I were waiting for the dancers after the So You Think You Can Dance show the other weekend, we discussed the discrepancy over what you call a store where you purchase food. The three of us call it a "food store" and say we're going "food shopping," but apparently most(?) people say "grocery store" and "grocery shopping." It was interesting to talk about because 1) I never realized people really said groceries and 2) now that I think about it, calling it the food store sounds really weird.
  
  
• Reading my way through the Harry Potter series for the second time is really weird. Most of Prisoner of Azkaban was hard to get through because they demonize Sirius Black, but it was worth it once I got to the moment when Harry finds out who he is.
  
  
• Speaking of which, I am seriously going to lose my shit when I go to see the first part of Deathly Hallows next month. Every time they show a commercial, I stop everything and watch intently, and then I'm overcome with excitement. I really should hurry up to make plans and figure out who wants to go see it with me. (Any takers? I'm looking at you, Melissa... I mean, we met over Harry Potter, I feel like we're destined to see it together.)
  
  
• I'm already Christmas shopping, and I'm equal parts proud of and disgusted at myself for thinking about it this early. Methinks I'll go with something homemade this year for at least part of everyone's gift considering I don't have the biggest budget. I also need to get started on making cards because I want to make them fancier than last year (as if anybody really cares about the details except me).
  

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?