Monday, October 22, 2007

Boo To You!

Spirits have a special way of playing the piano!

Fortune Teller says : Open your mind but not too much or your brain might fall out!



Boo to you, Karen!


Here in the boonies we know Halloween is on the way. Pumpkins rule! Strange but even with the terrible drought we're still suffering the orange guys are bigger than ever. Some growers even have record breakers on display to be admired at roadside stands. We've plenty of corn stalks too making enhancing decorations. Me, I'm going with pots of mums coloring up the fast dying annuals and accenting the fall leaves, just turning color.

Boo back at you Pet!

I’m deep in party prep mode. We are having our bi-annual Halloween bash. Halloween is a big deal at my house as it’s my hubby favorite holiday and our wedding anniversary. Yep, that’s right. I made the mistake of asking the hubby what day he wants to get married and he said on his favorite holiday. It turned out to be a great wedding. Hubby came dressed as Dracula and looked quite dashing while I wore my mothers wedding gown. But I changed into a Morticia from the Adams family skintight black gown for the reception. We were married in a very spooky huge Queen Anne Victorian. Now I live in one. : )

Pet

Wow! What a fun wedding. No wonder you guys are still sweethearts after all these years. Do the two of you get dressed up again as Dracula and Morticia? Or will you don other creative costumes? My DH is a grouch about dressing up for parties. He will probably wear his grouch tee shirt on the big night, the one with a lovely pic of the green Sesame Street character. Or the shirt with the legend DO I LOOK LIKE A PEOPLE PERSON?. Daughter gets him a witty shirt every year and he wears them year round, not only on dress up night.

Karen

Ah…Men and their T-shirts. Lol I think I’m going to dress up as a Victorian woman in mourning. I have the costume from the cemetery tour. Guess I have a Macabre wardrobe. : ) As for the hubby, he has a scary collection of masks. Sure he’ll look spooky. I have four huge bins of decorations I put up every year. Almost as much as Christmas! We have a graveyard in front yard of course. I have a severed head floating in the fountain. Several witches hang out on the front porch. Inside I have all kinds of ghouls and bats flying around. With a Victorian you can really go crazy, as the house is already spooky.

Pet

My house is modern, lots of wide open spaces…not the least bit spooky, so I don’t even try. Actually I’m not a great decorator so I keep holiday embellishments to a minimum. Too bad you’re all the way out there on the West Coast. I could use some help. In Florida Halloween festivities rule. The Woman’s Club runs a haunted house. The girls go to Chicago every year for a seminar on how create to a haunted house, complete with the needed trappings. They do a fabulous job and scare the dickens out of me. Here there’s a haunted cave which is intriguing me. Caves are naturally frightening places. I’d love to see you decorate a cave, Karen. Matter of fact they were made for you.

Karen

Hey I don’ know how I should take that. Do I look like a bat? Lol What I love about Halloween it’s an adults excuse to play dress up. I loved playing dress up when I was a kid. Planning what costume I’m going to don every year is a lot of fun. We creative types love any holiday that gives us an excuse to decorate like crazy and design some outrageous over the top outfit. And nothing is quite as satisfying as being able to give someone a good scare. Not an easy thing to do to jaded adults. : )

Pet

Since your parties don't include children, you don't know what happens to them on Halloween. I mean think of a neighborhood brimming over with over sugared tykes running loose in weird costumes. Costumes are fun, but the candy's the thing. I've tried to give out apples in the past, but healthy treats go over like lead balloons. Don't you think the trick or treat custom of today teaches our darlings how to beg? I'm not really that much of a spooky scrooge lady. I picked up the cutest skeleton lollipops to hand out. Some of the candy was really gross. Who can eat dead bodies even if they are tiny and made of sugar?

Karen

Don’t talk to me about eatable body parts. One of my favorite things to bake for Halloween are witches fingers. People of all ages love them. They are always a big hit at my party. Here’s the recipe:
Take any brand of pre-made sugar cookie dough and roll it into a finger shape. Score the middle with a fork to simulate the knuckle and then use a slivered almond as the fingernail. Be sure and use some egg white to glue the almond into the cookie or it will pop off. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes or until done. Once they’ve cooled, drizzle red glaze all over the base of the finger to get the perfect chopped off effect. Delicious. : )

Pet

You're carrying the finger food thingy to the extreme. Hacked off fingers go with spook day but maybe I've been watching too many CSI episodes. They love love showing off icky body parts. For some reason my eyes close at the sight of too much blood. Or even a little blood. I'm not big on vampires. Give me a nice, friendly bloodless ghost anytime, especially one that has historical knowledge. We're in Kentucky visiting some of Lincoln's boyhood cabins. The big guy with the beard seems to be present in every one of them. My imagination, or do we have a personal tour guide?

Karen

I wouldn't be surprised if old Abe was following you around. His wife believed he would return. We have a few haunted houses in my neighborhood. Two big Victorian mansions on my street have very active ghosts. The big Neo-Classical home up the block has a ghost that has a passion for kitty toys. At least several times a month when the owner comes home after a long day she finds her two kittys' toys lined up in a straight row in front of the grand staircase. She swears she doesn't have her cats trained. : ) And the really spooky Adams Family type mansion on the corner has a pair of eyes that likes to float down the three story high staircase followed by the sound of loud foot steps. Once when they were having work done on the house one of the guys ran screaming from the house when the eyes seemed to stare right at him. Very scary! Speaking of scary, I need to get busy spookifing my house. Happy Halloween!!!!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

cousinkris said...
The fires in San Diego county have now been beaten back and I have returned to work only to find that the CEO of our company lost his house. This kind of sympathy for upper management is a rare thing.

This was far too big a disaster for anyone to start complaining about what could have been done, but I'm sure that kind of thing is going to happen soon. I've heard counts as high as 1,500 homes lost. Many commercial properties have burned down as well. It's not a great day for the insurance companies. I tried to go and look at some of the damage, but the police won't let anyone through. Anybody who wants to go and see their home must go with a police escort.

Here at work I can hear the fire fighting planes flying overhead. Yes, the fires are still burning, but they've been pushed out into the wildlands.

The air reeks of smoke throughout the city, and escpecially near the fires. The skies are a kind of reddish gray. The sunsets are surreal.

Four years ago they found a hunter to blame the big fire on. The hunter got stoned and started a signal fire and wound up burning down a good part of San Diego county. This time there's nobody to blame. The fact that multiple fires started at one time may suggest there is something wrong on a larger scale.

October 25, 2007 2:20 PM