Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday! I am. My daughter from Texas is in town. I'm off from work for the week. We have snow on the ground but beautiful weather outside (and should be for the rest of the week). AND,... Everyone is well. What else can you ask for? (I guess, more money... but hey, can't have everything.)

I have my really cool Christmas loot posted on my FB page. You should really check it out. That album also has last year's too but that's ok. You'll see which are which.

I hope everyone is going to have a great New Year's. I'm hoping to stay awake until midnight to see the new year in. But other than that, nothing special here. Doing anything special?

After that, we only have 10 more months until.... you guessed it! Halloween!!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Halloween Parties

I was at the bank today working with my banker about setting up an account for this business. We got to talking about my website and Halloween. I had also told her that I worked at a haunt on Parker and I225, The 13th Door. She looked at me and then said, "Are you the gal out front that doesn't talk?" Yep! Sure am! So she remembered me from a year before.

Found out her birthday is around the 25th of October, and that she always has a Halloween party for her birthday.

She asked me if I just had costumes on the site or if I did parties too. I told her that, yes, I have Halloween parties on it too.

Later she had made a comment that she would make sure that she would book her party early.

Oops!

Actually, I misunderstood her. I thought that she meant if I had Halloween parties ON the website. I only have Halloween party IDEAS on the site, not a "party planner."

Now some years ago, I have toyed with the idea of setting up parties for others but nothing ever transpired. I work at a haunt now so my month is pretty booked up. No time for parties at that time of year.

This got me to thinking again about how much fun I have planning parties. The food. The decorations. All the stuff that I make for months in advance... ahhhh.

I sure do miss Halloween.... :(

Only 335 days away...!

Get me back into the spirit of things. I want to hear about your Halloween party. Just leave me a comment below.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Roadtrip to HAuNTcon

This is somewhat Halloween related. I'm driving to a haunter's convention, HAuNTcon. I left Sunday morning and plan on being in Kentucky by Monday night. I love to drive. I feel like it's restful. But then, I'm heading to an area that is getting reports of tornadoes and bad weather. You know you really wanna go somewhere pretty bad when you're driving to a state that is full of tornadoes. Hey how crazy is that? Ok, so I'm a little nuts, too.

I started off driving through all sorts of weather. Within the first hour after I left the house I drove through snow. A little later, hit rain. Now 4 hours later, it's nice. (Only in Colorado... and Kansas.) Bunch of wind.

While driving I had thoughts (can you believe that?... real thoughts.) One of my thoughts were to tell you about some of the ramblings of what goes on in my head (*scary*) when I am by myself on a two day drive... (Clear as mud? Well then, let's get on with it.)

Have you ever wondered about what your mind thinks about while driving all by yourself. Do you have focused thoughts or is it all over the place? Sometimes my mind wanders and I don't have to try to think about anything. Go into "zombie mode". Whatever "pops" into my mind is what I think about. Sometimes I have to focus on what I want to think about so my mind will wonder on a specific items. (That's when I get these epiphanies!)

A friend of mine was going to ride with me but couldn't because of work commitments. So I am by myself car dancing to the music. I have it turned on pretty loud.

Don't you love it when someone passes you very fast and then about a mile down the road you see him pulled over by a cop? Priceless... glad it's not me.

You ever play games with the ones you pass by? Whether they are aware of it or not. I usually play a type of leap frog game. I pass them and then they pass me, back and forth. What can I say? It passes the time.

I stayed in Bonner Springs, Kansas the first night. I slept horribly. Probably because I was tired. Probably because I wasn't in my own bed. They had a nice hotel. Bed was nice. Just slept bad. Hard a hard time falling asleep and then tossed and turned all night. Probably ate way too much junk food during the drive. Sugar overload. Not a good thing.

The next morning the wake up call did not happen. Don't think I slept through it. My sleep was too light. Woke up to being hurried and rain.

Rain, rain, and more rain during the drive for the second day. It stops raining in Saint Louis, Missouri. Long enough to view all the destruction from the tornado that hit the day before. Looks like Jurassic Park movie. All the tops of the trees had been eaten off. The trunks of the trees were shattered. There was blue tarps on all the roofs of the buildings. Some buildings had their "guts" laying out on the ground next to the highway. Then rain again.

I had to play my Rocky Horror Picture Show tunes and sing along. That gets me in the mood.

I was about 38 miles out when the countryside was very beautiful (in Kentucky at this time). Dark luminous clouds up above. But at that moment no rain. The countryside reminds me of driving to the mountains in Denver. Just greener and not so rocky. My headlights are on, that's how dark it is. Very green but then it has rained a lot too.

I'm excited about getting there but more excited about sleeping.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

What is Your Fondest Halloween Memory?

I was laying in bed last night thinking about the fondest Halloween memory that I had.

It was when I was young. Can't remember sure how young, somewhere between 9 and when you stop trick or treating. (I guess some never will stop trick or treating, but I felt like I had to go with the pack back then.) I was young enough to be still trick or treating.

It was back in the day where I was scared to go trick or treating because if you ran into the "bad boys" of the neighborhood, there was a really good possibility you would get egged for sure!

For those not in the know, egging is when someone throws an egg at you and you're a mess.

Lot's of houses would get egged at that time of year. Or least the houses that the bad boys didn't like. Unless you were cool, then they would leave you alone. I wasn't "cool" but I knew who to be friends with, at least a little bit.

Ok, back on track.

This is back when I lived in Houston. The weather would be fairly warm. No jacket was needed for Halloween. You could be out all night and not worried about getting too cold.

This was when majority of the houses would have their lights on. Almost every door would have candy to give to the trick or treat'ers.

There was this one house near the end of street where I lived that when you got to their door, you would go in. Now I know that's is a HUGH NO NO now but then, things were simpler to some degree. It was a time when there were the 'razor blades in apples' scares but these people I knew of from the church that I went to.

Anyway, when you go inside the first thing that would hit you was the air smelt like cinnamon. Looking around you would see some Halloween decorations on the walls. Mostly the paper pictures of witches and ghosts or black cats.

You would look over to the right along the wall. There would be this huge spread on the table. Punch in a glass punch bowl, hot chocolate, cookies neatly lined in a tray, caramel apples, popcorn balls in saran wrap with ribbons tied on them and, of course, the cornucopia of Halloween feasts, the CANDY BOWL. Grab at your will!

You'd go in there and knew you were spending time!

We would eat and drink as much as we could handle but we knew there were lots more houses that had to be treated!!

This memory wasn't anything extreme, I know. It brought a smile to my face. Just a nice warm feeling.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

How Many Haunted Houses?

How many haunted houses do you visit each year?

I remember one year my daughter, Amber, was still in school, not sure if she was in high school or in middle school. I told her that she could be bring a friend. Amber brought her friend, Shanna. We drove all over town checking out haunts. I believe we probably saw about 5 haunts that night.

There was a couple inside a mall. One was outside in a strip shopping center. One was near a racetrack. One was out in a farm like yard. I believe I got them all.

I can't remember all the details of all the haunts. There's just a few things that I really recall. I do remember when I went through the haunts that when I got back to the car, I would write down all the really cool stuff that I saw inside that haunt.

Inside one haunt, there was a person that looked like they didn't have a bottom half of their body. They had this person up high and in back of a room so that the guests couldn't mess with her. I remember stopping, staring and wondering, "how in the world was that done?" My daughter would just say "hurry up MOM!!" She was scared and wanted me to go but I couldn't help myself and had to look. I know now how it was done but back then... it was amazing (still is actually).

There was another haunt that had all this fog and you felt like you were walking through a swamp. All gurgle-ly and murky sounding with the cricket sounds and "plant life" around you. The scare-actors would hide behind the walls and get your feet as you walked by. That was pretty cool because you always expect someone to jump out in front of you so you don't think about your feet all the time.

The haunt that was outside in a farm like setting. I really liked that. You wandered around their yard on a path. They had a wagon with their skeletons in it. I can't remember some of the other stuff but then you get to a small building. You had to go up some stairs and there were a few scares in that and then back outside. I loved the outside part but it gets really cold here in October (sometimes, not this past year though) and outside could get pretty miserable. But the adrenaline was pumping pretty decent so you don't think about it too much.

Another one in the strip shopping center had a TV playing for the people in line to watch. It was the original 13 Ghosts!! I saw that when I was younger. It was one of the first scary movies that I can recall. I was ohhhhhh about 8 or 9 then. (Oops, did I just date myself?) Anyway, funny how that's what I really recall from that haunt.

The best part, I also remember between haunts that the girls would be asleep in the back seat. Even though they were tired they still trudged on!