The crazy lady with the costume bin

Wow, this has been the craziest Halloween season yet! This year, ever since mid-September, I've felt like I've been pulled in all directions. It all started with my Adam Lambert concerts and then it was Christian's birthday (he had a little party at school) and then I went on a cruise to Europe for the first two weeks in October (which I STILL have not documented, yes, I know, bad blogger) and then I quickly put together the Thrill The World Miami event for this year at the last moment (I've lost several years of my life stressing over THAT one) and then I went to Halloween Horror Nights and then I went to 3 parties the night before Halloween and then I went trick or treating the actual night of. I AM EXHAUSTED! Hello November! I welcome you with open arms! The only craziness you offer me is Thanksgiving (which I don't cook, so it's not really crazy for me) and Black Friday (which I go to purely for sport).

Anyway, that having been said, back to the Halloween blog. This year, someone commented that they had seen me in 3 different costumes in one season! Oh how true that is. I'm a Halloween nut and I have a costume bin at home. Every year I just pick from there and mix and match to make my costume. I hate the pre-packaged ones, they're just so void of creativity and ingenuity. Christian is starting his own costume drawer as well because this year, he too had on 3 different costumes (Wolverine, Spiderman, Darth Vader). Jordan on the other hand, hates costumes. He clearly got that from his father. I had to struggle with him to get him to wear a superman pajama (not even a real costume, but whatever) to go trick or treating!

On to my costumes, for Thrill The World, I dressed up as a zombie of course.. For Halloween Horror Nights, you can't dress up, otherwise, you know I would've had a 4th costume. No crazy costumes there, just good ole crazy me (in the asylum house no less).

On Saturday night, our Thrill The World group performed again at Hellrotika. This was a fundraiser for Save Dade (which truly deserves its very own blog post for the vast number of outrageous and creative costumes that were in attendance...I LOVED IT!). For that gig, I was dressed up as Alice Cooper in Wonderland. I picked this because later that same night I went down the rabbit hole (not a dirty euphimism I swear) to my friend Melanie's Alice in Wonderland party. She totally went all out with the decorations and her backyard looked awesome. She goes all out with decorations just like I do (even more so I would say).

And last, but certainly not least. On Halloween night I dressed up as Junice Merill. For those of you unfamiliar with Juney, she's a character from SNL. Here's the video of the skit. I was recently introduced to her via a friend's post on Facebook and once I saw it, there was no turning back. I had to be her!

Unfortunately, I didn't really go anywhere with the costume on, I just took the kids trick or treating (and went to Jenny's Halloween campout later on). I don't think that many people would have recognized who I was anyway, so the costume was purely for the self satisfaction of being able to put it together and be a freak for a night...oh wait, I'm a little strange all the time.

I am returning from the dead...

...just to show you the pictures of Christian and Jordan in their Halloween costumes!

Jordan was dressed as baby Michael Jackson (does that come as a surprise to anyone?). Christian was dressed up as Batman. He wore the mask intermittently throughout the night, but I managed to get JJ to wear his wig the whole time he was trick or treating. I guess he forgot he had it on at some point.

At around 6:45 we went trick or treating, but it felt strange because it was still light out. The first 10 or so doors that we knocked on, did not open the door. That kind of sucks. There also weren't that many kids out. Chris got tired pretty quickly, so we headed home after a short while.

It's kind of sad because Halloween these days isn't what it used to be. Nowadays, there's hardly any kids out because they all go to the mall. For some reason getting candy from Abercrombie and Fitch just kills the Halloween fun for me. Alot of people stop giving candy altogether because they get tired of buying it year after year only to have no kids show up, the kids don't show up because people don't give candy, so the cycle continues.

I loved trick or treating with my cousins when I was young. I remember a whole herd of us would go from house to house (with parental chaperones) and almost everyone would open the door...and no, there weren't any razor blades in my candy. Some houses had such cool decorations on the outside and some were even decorated inside. Ooooh spoooky! I remember we would pass many other herds of children too. After we got tired of walking around (or the parents were tired) we would head back home and check out our stash (which was always huge)! This is when the wheeling and dealing would commence. I cringed when I got pennies instead of candies and I was always trying to trade away the candy corn for gum. Ah, those were the good ole' days.

I know I can't turn back time and let my children experience Halloween in the 80's, but hopefully Chris and JJ can make their own wonderful Halloween memories so they can carry those with them for many years to come.

Happy Be-lated Halloween!!!

I haven't really filled you in on the happenings around here this past month, so let's play catch up shall we? First off, landscaping be damned! I was able to put my creepy stuff out among the plants, so THERE! I pulled my tombstones and skulls out of my garage and displayed them in my mini yard. I took some pictures, but I can't find them right now, so I'll post them later.

Christian and I also carved some pumpkins. Unfortunately, I did it too soon and they were long gone by the time Halloween came around. I think I did a mighty good job though considering that I've only done this about once or twice before.

Of course, my spooky village also made an appearance this year. Christian managed to only break one figurine this time.

On Wednesday we headed up to Orlando to go to Halloween Horror Nights once again. Since JJ is breastfeeding, I had to take him with me. I also took my mom with me so she could watch him in the hotel while I went to party with the monsters. I'm crazy, but not insane enough to take my child to that wacky madness. The rest of my party consisted of 8 other friends, some repeats from last year and some new volunteers too. Unfortunately we got a late start, so we didn't get to the park till about 8 or 9. We had an express pass, but unfortunately it wasn't enough and we weren't able to see all the haunted houses. We missed out on Creatures and Interstellar Terror. The scare zones were really fun though and since I had my Vault shirt on, I got quite a bit of attention from the creatures that were roaming the park that night. (Ha ha! I just went to the vault website so I could link to it in this post and I noticed that my picture was on the page!) We had a great time, but it felt a little rushed this year and the houses felt a little empty. Hopefully next year will be better. I was supposed to meet up with my Orlando friend WB, but my mom wanted to leave the next morning asap, so that didn't happen either.

On Halloween night I took CMan trick or treating for the first time ever (my mom took him last year, he didn't go the years before that). He was a little (alot) spooked out by the whole affair and wanted nothing to do with it. Oh sure, he loved wearing the costume (a pirate of course) at home, but going outside with it? in the dark? knocking on strangers doors?...not so much. He endured the torture and was very happy to be home. Hopefully this is not a trend that will be continued...Mama needs her candy! JJ also went trick or treating, I didn't want him to freak out too when he was older, so I figured I'd start him out at a young age...plus hello, more candy for me. After we were done with our neighborhood, I left JJ with Ren and headed to my mom's neighborhood to check out the decorations of the houses. While roaming the streets, I found a guy who built his own haunted house. I was totally floored with excitement...another loony! Like me! Except his house was outside and it was actually a structure that he constructed out of plywood. Awesome! I couldn't take enough pictures. Even though it had no actors, just props, CMan refused to go in...and I didn't force him. We don't want to traumatize him or anything you know.

One Little, Two Little, Three...

Thank you for all the good wishes in my previous posts; all is going well so far (cross fingers).

This particular post is over a month late, but it's taken me that long to gather up all the required pictures. I had to go into my parents vault of old and embarassing pictures to aquire these beauties so read on and enjoy.

In El Salvador December 12th is celebrated as "Fiesta de los Indios" (literal translation = party of the Indians or Celebration of the Indians). On this day Our Lady of Guadalupe , the patron saint of Latin America, is venerated to commemorate the account of her appearances to Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from December 9 through December 12, 1531. Even though this event took place in Mexico and has nothing to do with El Salvador, it seems that Salvadoreans like to party and will gladly borrow another country's holiday to do just that.

Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican, so on this day, children in El Salvador dress up in indigenous costumes and walk with the Virgin of Guadalupe in a procession.

Salvadoreans apparently also like to dress up (see people, I'm not crazy...it's in my roots). Here I am in my Indian outfit holding some mangos.

Not wanting to waste a precious dress-up opportunity, I asked my aunt to send me a little Indian outfit for Cman to wear on December 12th.

Behold the indigenous cuteness:


The only thing missing was the painted on mustache.

Here are some pictures of me and my cousin Camilo (circa 1980?) in El Salvador wearing our little Indian outfits:

Happy Extra-Belated Birthday to me

Well, it appears that my little hissy fit paid off. Hurricane Noel went away and didn't hit us. Although it rained all day for a week before Halloween. It did not rain a drop on Halloween night from 7 to 9 (the hours that my haunted house was open). Is that cool or what?

I've got lots of pictures to share and lots of stories to tell because I've been a slacker (actually I've been super busy with the insane production of my haunted house), so I need to rewind a bit before I tell that story.

First off, my 32nd birthday was on Oct 20 and we had a lovely girls night IN party at my house. My gal pals and I (and R who was babysitting us) had a great time drinking, dressing up and playing party games. I don't remember which game we played first because it's all a little fuzzy now, but we played dress up hot potato, knock the bottle over with a racquetball in pantyhose, win lose or draw and the open the box with the socks game. If you would like specific instructions on how to play either of these games, do contact me. We topped the evening off with more drinks and some birthday cake. Yay! I had a great time and I think I'm going to plan another one of those nights again for the near future. Let's see what games I can come up with for next time.

Pint-sized Pirate

As promised two weeks ago, here are the pictures of my little pirate. Cman only wore the costume long enough for me to take one picture of him because it is way too hot these days to be wearing a costume outside.

Anthony's birthday party was quite fun. The kids got little pirate loot bags with a scarf and eye patch and other fun pirate stuff. The cake was adorable too. There was also a bounce house and guess who actually got in? That's right...Chris did! I went in with him and at first he had his usual koala grip on me, but shortly thereafter he let go and started hanging on to the walls and trying to walk and trying to bounce all over the place. Woohoo! Then when he got out of the bounce-house, he started climbing all over the place on all sorts of things. I'm glad that he's finally starting to gain some independence and mobility. I think the swimming and the MyGym (yes, he goes to that too, that's a post for another day) have really helped.

That same weekend we also went to the birthday party of a family friend and Sofia was there. Chris must really like her because he tried to feed her and didn't get jealous when my mom was carrying her. This past weekend he saw Sofia again at a baby shower. This time he was more preoccupied with feeding himself...oh, and looking under her dress. They sure start young don't they?

He ate his first McDonald's cheeseburger the other day. Mind you, the boy hates chewing things, so we have to feed him the pureed stuff. He sure chewed that puppy up real fast and ate the WHOLE thing (he left about 2 bites of it). It's funny because he also squeezed the heck out of it too. Before I get the evil eye for feeding him fast food, my mom has also discovered that he loves broccoli, cucumber and tomato, so I guess that balances out the junk food right?

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

What a fashionable bow tie!...

...For some reason I feel as if I've seen it somewhere else before.