Halloweeny Round – Up

I love Halloween. The fake blood and the sense of camaraderie makes me happy, and this year was no different. The girls and I planned a small gathering of friends and booked a night at the London Cocktail Club – one of my favourite bars in town, who were polled as having a Halloween Spooktacular with themed cocktails and bar staff that go bump in the night. Perfect.

We assembled with a plethora of outfits; I went as Dead Riding Hood, the boy as Dracula, and various other outfits including the entire line up for KISS. We were excited.

Turns out, London doesn’t really do fancy dress. We walked into the bar to a sea of men in suits and women in jeans, and stole the show by waltzing to our reserved area (one step ahead, London crowds) and boogieing the night away to classics such as The Monster Mash.

The (not so) Wicked With of the West

Dead Riding Hood and Dracula

KISS!

How was your Halloween?

“At First Cock Crow, The Ghosts Must Go, Back To Their Quiet Graves Below”

I have a confession.

Until this weekend, I had never carved a pumpkin. NEVER.

My Mum doesn’t believe in Halloween as a holiday, professing that it’s an American tradition (a theory that I disproved in a previous Halloween post) and deemed trick or treating as begging, so we weren’t allowed to go.

It didn’t bother me all that much, given that as a child, the 31^st October was always pretty cold and rainy, so going out knocking on doors dressed as a cat didn’t have the thrill factor to me.

my beautifully melty pumpkin creations

But over the past few years, Halloween has become a fun event. So this year, the boy and I dragged massive pumpkins home from the shops, and set about carving them.

The competition was fierce, and it was a messy duel. Bits of pumpkin goo adorned the walls of my flat, and brief tirades of swearing happened sporadically as one of us cut too far into the pumpkin, or alternatively, too far into one of our fingers.

The results were fantastic, and the pumpkins sat on my window sill, flickering eerily all weekend, until the heat from the candles turned them from scary idols to wizened old vegetables. Time for the bin.

We had so much fun, that this is now our new Halloween tradition. And I’m looking forward to a party in a cocktail bar tomorrow night – fancy dress and spookily themed cocktails. Watch this space!

Whats your favourite Halloween tradition?

When There’s No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

At first cock-crow the ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
~Theodosia Garrison

 Are you sitting comfortably, my dear? Let me tell you a story, of horror and fear….

I’m a bit of a wimp. My bedroom door is right by a door that leads downstairs, and if I go to the loo in the night I often run past the door to get back into bed, just in case the ghouls get me. As a five year old, I vividly remember being read a story by a school teacher about a monster that lived in the space created when a door was left open; the triangle between that and the wall, and now, as a twenty six year old woman, I still sleep with the door shut. Its habit, but I’m sure it has its roots in this. I hate to be able to see darker patches, it stops me from sleeping.

So this weekend, when my sister and I decided to go to the cinema we had a bit of a debate over the right film. I opted for Madagascar 3 (cartoons and penguins) but she preferred Paranormal Activity 4. You know the one, demons are let in, demons throw humans all over the place, humans in the cinema join together in terrified union, humans go home and have to sleep with the light on in case fictional tale of fear is somehow true… not my cup of tea. BUT, seeing as I am closer to thirty than twenty, I thought it was time to embrace my inner wimp and become at one with my demons (see what I did there) so I did it. I braved. To be honest, the film was rubbish and not at all scary, but I thought that about the first one. Until….

I went to Cyprus in September. On the first night I struggled to get to sleep; the heat, new environment and presence of my best friend was all alien to me, and it took a really long time to drift off. When I eventually did, I was woken by a crash that sounded like it was coming from the bathroom. I went to investigate.

Just in case you are trying to picture the scene, I wasn’t armed with anything, I was just lookin’. Not alarmed, nothing. It sounded like the noise when your shampoo gets knocked off the bath and scatters down into the tub, but when I got to the bathroom, there was nothing there. The noise was too loud to have come from an adjoining room, but despite being suitably freaked out, we went back to sleep. Pretty soon I heard the steady breathing of my friend, who had gone straight back to sleep with no concern. Could I? No, I could not.

 Because all I could think about was the bit in Paranormal Activity 1 where I had laughed. The goaty footprints. At the time, when the girl put the talc all over the floor and I joked that didn’t the devil have hooves and wasn’t this the perfect time to see goaty prints in the talc, I didn’t think it would come back to haunt me.

What-if-there-really-is-a-devil-and-its-portal-is-a-hotel-room-in-Cyprus? I panicked.

Eventually, I managed to calm myself enough to start drifting off, and just as I was about to fall asleep, I woke myself up screaming.

It had happened again.

Luckily, my best friend has the patience of a saint and managed to calm me down, but by this point I was freaking out, and ready to go sleep in the foyer of the hotel and get the first bus out to a church in the morning, to stand on some hallowed ground or whatever it is you are supposed to do when being haunted.

We finally found out what it was. The fridge had been making a horrendous humming noise, and to help me get to sleep, I had unplugged it. I left the door open to stop it from stinking our room out, not realising that it had a really small ice freezer in the top. Through the night, the ice was melting and large chunks were falling from the freezer onto the tile floors, causing the crashing noise.

Totally rational explanation.

Still slightly traumatised.

I’m looking forward to sharing some of the outfits from the Halloween party next week 🙂

Do you have any ridiculous stories that scared you at the time?

Fancy Dress Update!

I have had some fantastic entries into the Who Dresses The Fanciest? competition and I’m hoping that there will be some more great ones to follow. You don’t have to be a blogger to enter; if you have a fantastic fancy dress costume that you want entered in then send it over to me at laura.tinker@hotmail.co.uk and tweet me to tell me you are playing the game!
If you want to enter your kids or someone you know then that’s fine too; my favourite so far has to be Tori’s little boy dressed as George Michael from the WHAM! Days; it’s perfect!

I have mentioned that it wont be me doing the judging, after all I am quite attached to some of you (for example if Jules sends in a picture of Uncle Jesse in a hat, he would win HANDS DOWN. I love that dog!) so I have enlisted the most fantastic fancy dresser of them all. She is the don of the dress – up, the Queen of the costume, without further ado I present to you my sister, Little Bean!!

(Fright Night At Thorpe Park last Hallowe’en)

My little sister once went to a fancy dress party and came home commenting “I didn’t realise fancy dress meant dressing like a whore now!” Turns out she had gone to a Heroes and Villains party with a FANTASTIC costume, and been surrounded by Wonderwomen with their boobs out and teeny tiny skirts on. She totally rocked Dangermouse, and it has gone down in history as being the best fancy dress costume I have EVER SEEN!

(Dangermouse!!!!)

It’s not just limited to Halloween costumes either; I just want to see the best costume you have ever made.

(Pub Golf)

If you spent house at home with a glue gun and some paper mache making a Ghostbusters outfit, or went as Edward Scissorhands for Hallowelen, let us know!

(The cutest Where’s Wally in the whole of the land)

 What are you waiting for? Join in the fun! After all, laughter is contagious, and it’s catching…..