Halloween House- 2015 edition

Welcome to our spooky Halloween house tour.  I decorated on October 3rd so I'm just barely squeaking this post in before the end of the month.  Everything Halloween will be taken down on Sunday but the fall stuff gets to stay until I put Christmas stuff up.  Which might be on November 14th due to all sorts of travel plans. We'll see.

Let's examine the outside first.

We want to go shopping on Sunday morning to find a Halloween blow-up for the front yard.  Several of our neighbors have them and we feel like we need to keep up with the Joneses.  I also want to point out that I edited our address out of this picture in two locations and you can't even tell.  I'm strangely proud of it.

We bought the black one last year for $1 the day after Halloween.

My friend Sandy, who passed away right after Elliott was born, gave me the pumpkin stake for my birthday yeeeeeaaaaars ago.  I feel happy and sad every year when I get it out of the garage.  It is truly a bittersweet pumpkin.

  

The mat was another very cheap find last year.  It was maybe $2 or $3 the day after Halloween.

Now we'll head inside.

This is the first year I have cleared off all the "regular" stuff from these black shelves.  I usually don't do that until Christmas decorations go up, but I did it early as to make Christmas decorating easier when it happens.  That's planning to the 50th degree.

I didn't include these pillows in my birthday presents to myself post, but these were pretty much birthday presents to myself.  I bought them in August.

The hallway closet

My dad bought us the big skull last year.  It is battery operated and lights up and says spooky things.

Sandy also gave me the big candle holder pumpkin on the bottom left.  Bittersweet again.

I used to buy my cinnamon broom from Fresh & Easy every year.  Damn you Fresh & Easy for going out of business.  I bought this one at Trader Joe's.  It was actually cheaper.

Full disclosure, the bathroom pictures are from last year.  But it looks exactly the same this year.

Pantry door

And finally, awful pictures of the outside lights at night.

I hope you enjoyed the tour!  If you're local, get on over here before Sunday afternoon and I'll give you the live version along with a cup of coffee and some sort of baked good.....baked freshly at your request.

Ten Weekends

We have fun plans for the next nine weekends (ten weekends in a row counting this past weekend).  We don't have plans for both Saturday and Sunday of every weekend, and we don't have jam packed plans for every weekend, but there is at least one fun, exciting thing/event happening every single weekend until January 2nd.  That's the first weekend we're completely free. And I'll probably make some plans for that weekend by the end of this week.

This is the schedule:

This weekend: Halloween

Nov 6, 7, 8: Rehearsal Dinner, Wedding, State Fair

Nov 13: Spencer and I go on a Friday night date to dinner and to see The Secret Garden

Nov. 20, 21, 22: Michael and I go to Vegas with my brother, mom and dad

Nov. 26, 27, 28, 29-  Long Thanksgiving weekend

Dec. 5- Holiday luncheon at Gloria's

Dec. 12- Elliott's birthday party and Laura/Josh spend the night

Dec. 19- Desert Botanical Gardens Luminarias with my friends

Dec. 25, 26, 27- Christmas Day, dinner party at my brother's, my dad's annual party

This past weekend we started Saturday with a kid's festival in the park.  It was hot outside and kind of lame, but we got lots of free stuff and the kids had fun. 

After the festival we bought a few last minute costume things, headed home, ate lunch, blah, blah, blah and then got ready to go to Shireen and Joseph's annual Halloween Party.

Halloween night always end up being busy and chaotic so I made sure to get good costume pictures of everyone.  I might do a comparison post of costumes from 2007 to now. 

Elliott as Darth Vader

Spencer as Darth Maul

Michael as Chewbacca

Michael was going to be C3PO so that our costumes, collectively, would be "The Siths vs The Droids" which helped to explain how we had characters together that were not in the same movies.   We bought a $5  C3PO mask from Target, but then we couldn't find anything for his body, so at the very last minute we switched characters because this Chewie onesie was cheap and available.

I was R2-D2

without the hat

with the hat

Since my costume was just a nightgown from Target I thought I would jazz things up with a little make-up.

  My google search led me to this total and utter nonsense:

and this

Oh and this.  Can you even imagine? 

This seemed a little more reasonable though, so this was my model.

Yeah.  I think I should to send this into a pinterest fail website.  I also need to get my eyebrows waxed or threaded immediately.

The Siths vs The Sidekicks

We headed off to the party on Saturday evening.  My whole group of friends were there.

We won first place in the costume contest last year.  The minute I saw John walking in I knew we had lost to him this year.

John as Beetlejuice and Maryellen as Lydia

Brenda as a flapper

The food table

Cynthia as a sexy wench and Joni as a witch

Lydia and R2-D2 selfie

And non-selfie, real picture

Beetlejuice enjoying a juice box

I made Michael wear his mask as we drove to the party (I drove, he rode).  I hope someone got a laugh out of it. 

Droid and Wookie love

The kids waiting for the results of the costume contest

Yep.  John came in first place.  I called it!

Collecting his trophy and prize

Lauren as a witch

These pictures got a little out of order

We all had  great time at the party and are already starting to brainstorm ideas for reclaiming our title for next year.

On Sunday morning I picked up Cynthia and Maryellen, then we drove together to pick up Brenda, and then the four of us went out to lunch at Arcadia Farms in Scottsdale.  We had to wait about 30 minutes for a table, so we hung out in the adjoining marketplace.  We wasted time with stupid pictures.

Cynthia took pictures of everyone at the table and instagramed them, but she only sent my picture to me.  I just didn't want you to think I'm that vain.

After lunch we met Shireen, Lauren and Kristen (who joined us for the day because Joni couldn't make it) at Desert Stages Theater.  I've never been to a show here before.  It was great.  I'll be back.

We saw the Addams Family for a little pre-Halloween fun.

I found this image through google.  It's not from this show, but it is from the same theater.  It shows how the stage is in the center and all the seats are around the stage.  I thought that was really cool. 

The actors went out to the lobby after the show for pictures.

Lurch was my favorite.  It's appropriate that his head is cut off here.  Uncle Fester came in a close second and Morticia's cleavage gets the bronze.  Wow.  Defy gravity much?

After we left the theater Cynthia wanted an ice cream cone from McDonald's and as I drove there there was an incident with a Scottsdale police officer and some flirting from the back seat and some side eye from the cop.  It was all too funny coming from a car that normally has two car seats in the back. 

All in all, an excellent way to kick off a busy 2.5 months of weekend fun.