Halloween Happiness...

Well, it's getting close to time for my yearly Halloween Party. I don't know why, but Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. (Christmas is more important because of what it represents, but Halloween is more my style, though I do have a Christmas party every year too.) It's just so much fun to dress up, carve pumpkins, bake sweets, and of course, have a party. Plus, I love the change in the weather. I've had more than my fill of summer already.

I'm glad to say that this year we should have a good selection of movies. With Netflix, we've downloaded several classics such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," the original "House on Haunted Hill," "Nosferatu," and "The Phantom of the Opera." Also we've recently acquired Stephen King's "IT" and the remake of "House on Haunted Hill." We're viewing them to decide which ones to show at the party, but the point is, this year we should have a wider selection. (Also, it's just nice to have an excuse to watch more horror movies. I actually had never seen "IT" until I decided to review it for the party and I'm glad to stay it stuck close enough to the book to earn my approval.)

Also, we almost have everything we need for our costumes. I've always wanted to dress as Alice in Wonderland with my escort as the Mad Hatter for Halloween, and it looks like this year it's going to happen. I have a pretty good Alice costume and I've already made a few minor adjustments to make it tasteful (if you buy any kind of woman's costume now-a-days, it seems that they design them to show as much skin as possible, something I'm not very comfortable with. I might have lost nearly eleven pounds now so I don't think I look bad, but I still have my modesty...). Still, the props are what make the outfit since I have a white rabbit stuffed animal and a grinning cat pillow that looks a lot like the Cheshire cat. I'll carry a basket with the props separately for the full effect. Now we just need to finish up Joel's costume. He has a nice dress shirt, vest, bow-tie, black shoes, and dress pants that will work, and even a pocket watch, but he still needs the most important parts of the costume--a old fashioned style coat and, of course, the HAT.

I'm thinking of carving Alice in Wonderland style pumpkins this year since I really can't top the Nintendo themed pumpkins at the first party, and that will at least fit the theme of our costumes. A creepy grinning cat face would be pretty cool, and I might be able to pull of some face silhouettes like the drawings from the book. We'll see. We're also throwing around the idea of a sweet tea styled alcoholic punch this time, since we almost always do a mixed fruit/cranberry juice punch. (We want to do a few different things this year.) I still don't know what refreshments we'll be providing, but I do know we'll have some sort of meat (usually meatballs or little smokies), lots of candy, popcorn, chips and dip, and probably some sort of Halloween cake or cookies.

As for activities there are movies on in the main room, a rock band room in the back for those that are into that sort of thing, and an extra room for board games, table top RPG's or possibly classic video games this year (Hopefully we can set that up since that was a request last time). And this year, no drunken mishaps...definitely no drunken mishaps. We'll be calling cabs if we have to. ;-)

Hopefully we'll see you there!