Happy Halloween!

October has been packed to the gills with all of my favorite things...apple picking, a wedding, Purdue football, antiquing, a dinner party, great restaurants, trick-or-treating with little ones, pumpkin carving, and all things spooky. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to take our annual haunted hay ride or don costumes this year, but really, our schedule was already scary enough. (And every free moment has gone to processing our vacation photos...only 313 to go!)

Our apartment was filled to the brim with the Halloween spirit this year. These pictures are just a *few* of our decorations. Can you believe it? Subtlety really isn't my strong suit.

I moved my cupcake wrapper garland from the fireplace to the mirror this year. I like it much more.

I think that Andy is ready to welcome Thanksgiving!

Annual Halloween Dinner

Andy and I hosted our parents and Aunt Ruth for our annual Halloween dinner on Sunday.

This year's place cards were a jack-o-lantern theme. (You can see 2009's ghosts here and bats and 2010's bats here.)

I picked up these small jack-o-lanterns and colorful bouquets at Dominick's on the morning of the party. It was a random, but happy coincidence.

The bat straws are from Home Goods. They were a straw fail, as everyone felt they bat was too high up on the straw.

Look  at all of the orange decorations floating in the background. I may be partial, but I love how our Halloweeny apartment looks this year.

I have so many ideas floating in my head for Halloween place cards. I wish that we could have a party a weekend so that I could use them all.

I have a ton of projects to share from the month of October. I've been too busy project-ing to blog. And I'm halfway through processing my Paris photos. They're taking forevs. I'm on the road a lot in November, so I hope to have some hotel downtime to get 'em done.

Spooky is Just Around the Corner...

I have so much excitement coming up in the next month, but I can't stop thinking about Halloween, despite myself.

These candelabras from CB2 will look great on the Halloween table—especially when laced with some scaaaaaaaaaaaaaary webs. They'd be excellent for a modern dinner party or wedding too.

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Am I a bad blogger because I took the time to save this picture and write the post, but am choosing to go to sleep instead of create an "inspiration board" around these? I am pretty sure that I am. Sorry, dear friends/readers.

Hallow's Eve 2010

Halloween was a hoot this year. As you know, my friend and I dressed up for work.

On Saturday, Andy and I went Trick or Treating out in the suburbs with our niece and nephew.

Our nephew was Yoda, and hated it. His big sister was Alice. (Sorry, only faceless photos allowed on the Interwebs for kids that don't belong to me.)

We saw some quite excellent and funny monsters.

And then we went to the annual concert at the Double Door. I dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein.

Or more appropriately, Edna Turnblad does the Bride of Frankenstein**.

I bought my wig at Paper Source. Not kidding.

Andy was a pirate. He says, "Arrrrrgh! Look at me pants that I made me-self because my wife was freaking out over her costume, she was."

We've clearly moved out of the honeymoon phase, as try as I might, I couldn't get him to wear this  because it would be "hot."

And now it's time to pack it all in until next year. :(

**So about the BoF dress. I used the instructions from Martha Stewart's Gray Bride costume, which I am totally making one year.

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However, the instructions say to use seam binding and a large needle. I spent three hours trying to do that. The seam binding and big needle are too thick to get through the bunched up tulle, but too large to sew it. I spent three hours and a lot of curse words trying to do it her way before giving up and grabbing some 1/4" thick, 25 cent ribbon and a plain needle. It took about an hour to stitch it together the old-fashioned way. I'd also recommend adjusting the amount of tulle based on your size. I probably could have used twice as much to make it more opaque.

Happy Halloween from My Cube!


My work costume is kind of half-assed, but in, my defense, I found out that I was dressing up at 4:00 p.m. yesterday. I whipped this up with stuff from around the house.

I've been going through some very severe allergic reactions to cosmetics lately, so I was afraid to put on "non-toxic" Halloween make-up. Instead, I used baby powder* and red lipstick (which turned out to be lip gloss) to make myself look ghostly and bloodied. But I really look like a cement worker that ate a glazed jelly donut on break.


*I couldn't find my left shoe. The legs of all of my pants and bottoms of my dresses are now covered in white dust from my bumping into them while digging in the bottom of the closet.

Halloween @ My Mom's House

Anyone who wonders why I turn into a big fat nerd when it comes to decking my halls just has to visit my mom's house. It's a total learned behavior.

 Halloween Tree #1

Halloween Tree #2

Halloween Tree #3

Halloween Tree #4

Halloween Tree #5
(This one is actually a countdown calendar.)

And she has two more trees in the basement! (Oddly enough, I bought her all but one of those trees!)

There is an on-going family debate on this next one. Are they ghosts with pumpkins stuck on their heads or pumpkins in costume? Or do they have toothaches?

These are the decorations from our engagement party.