3 Days of Halloween. Day 3: Costumes

Over the years, I’ve had some pretty good costumes, and I owe a many thanks to my mom for making most of them. I’ll try to recall some of them here and include picture when I can, but honestly, I don’t have very many pictures. I asked my parents to send me some, but instead they sent me a bunch of pictures from a camp that we went to where we had to dress up…. Not Halloween. But I’ll do my best.

The first costume I can remember was a bat and I was probably in like first grade. I wore all black, and my mom had sewn on wings to my shirt. Pretty simple. Pretty classic. Only that was the year I had discovered cheap drugstore make-up. I gross myself out to think of how much I wore that night. The lipstick that was so red it would burn your eyes out, and bright blue eyeshadow. I don’t even know how that would go with the whole bat thing I had going but I was young. I also thought eyeshadow was supposed to go on your eyebrows…. Lets just say that I’m glad I don’t have a picture of that year.

The next one I can think of was second grade and it was the first year Kathryn and I had done a costume together. Everyone had always told us that we looked like twins so we had decided to dress up as Mary-Kate (Kathryn) and Ashley (Me). Only Kathryn’s feet started to hurt her halfway through trick-or-treating so she had to be pulled in a wagon and go slowly with all the parents. I decided to go ahead because I wanted to stay with all the other little kids…. a bad idea. When I got to the door, the people would ask me, “Oh hi! What are you dressed up as?” And I would say, “I’m Ashley!” And then they would say, “Hi Ashley, what are you dressed up as?” Probably the worst costume ever.

The next few years Kathryn and I did all of our costumes together. We did stuff like a pair of dice, raisins, a pair of blue genes, and my favorite, a two-headed monster. We did that one for 2 consecutive years because we loved it so much. Here’s a picture

Sorry about the horrible quality, but there we are on the upper right in green. My little brother is in front of us with the big red box around him. Don't know what that was supposed to be.... and hey look! It looks like Lady Gaga got her style from the kid in the center with the blonde wig!

Only sometimes people didn’t get what we were. We got asked of we were a cow, or a goat. I don’t see where they got that idea from. We also got asked if we were the headless horseman. Pretty close guess seeing as we have 2 HEADS!

I also don’t really want to mention this one because eits so embarrassing, but my friend Lanie, and I dressed up as trees with a clothesline one year. Like I said, embarrassing.

In high school some friends form my cross country team and I dressed up as the Wizard of Oz. I was Glinda, my friend Lanie was Elphaba/The Wicked witch of the west (of you haven’t seen Wicked), Kathryn was the cowardly Lion, my friend Morgan was The scarecrow, my friend Jessie was Dorthey, and my friend Oshin was the Wizard. The person who was supposed to be the Tin man got sick:(

Last year, I was Lady Gaga. That was definitely my most favorite costume. I had random people coming up to me asking for a picture with me. It was so fun

This is was the actual dress she wore for the people who don't know what I'm talking about

And finally, this year I was Avril Lavigne one night, and the Taylor Swift song “You belong With Me” another night. So fun!

Avril Lavigne

"She wears short skirts, I wear T-Shirts, She's cheer captain, and I'm on the Bleachers" Get it?

I hoped you enjoyed my 3 days of Halloween:) Happy Halloween!

3 Days of Halloween. Day 2: The Art of Trick-or-Treating

Trick-or-treating was really intense in our neighborhood. As kids, we would always have races to see who would be the first one to ring the doorbell. For some odd reason, it was awesome if you were the first one to ring the doorbell. Kathryn and I got really good at it. We would win a lot of the races, even if our legs were tied together. (We had the costume one year that required us to have 3 legs, and even then, we would still beat the other kids to the door.) Like I said, we were intense. Maybe that’s why we became runners. None of the other groups of kids would ever race to the doorbell though, and I think I know why. They had probably been terrorized by my Dad. One year, my dad dressed up like a scarecrow. A really good scarecrow. He wore a mask to cover his face, stuffed stuffing into his body suit to make him look lumpy, and stuck bits of straw around any openings in his costume. The he sat in a lawn chair outside our house, put the bucket of candy and a “take one” sign on his lap, then he went limp. It looked so good. Kids weren’t sure if he was real or not so they would approach very cautiously. I wish I had been there the time my Dad scared two boys. They were probably around 15 years old or so and they were dressed as jock football players. A perfect target. They were nervous to approach, but one of the boys finally got enough courage to go up and poke my dad. He didn’t move. The boy was relieved because he was assured that my Dad was just a stuffed scarecrow. The other boy then approached and they both started to take candy. That’s when my Dad sprung up shouting, “AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!” According to my Dad, those boys screamed like little girls all the way to the end of my driveway…. And I have a long driveway. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had peed their pants on their flight away.

Our group of kids got really good at trick-or-treating though. There’s an art to it. Over the years, you learn which houses to avoid and which houses to definitely go to, even of it is -30 degrees outside. We would always skip the houses that gave out the diet granola bars. (This was actually a “candy” one year). There was also one lady that only let you take 1 small piece of candy even though she had a giant bucket full. There aren’t that many kids in our neighborhood so what are you gonna do lady, eat it all by yourself? One year she had candy and balloons and she told us that we could pick one or the other. One little girl didn’t hear her so she took a piece of candy and a balloon. The lady was faster than lightening. She snatched the balloon back yelling, “Give me my balloon back!” And that was the last year we went to her house. But regardless of how many houses we would skip, we still got a shit ton of candy. Screw the little pumpkin buckets, we used pillowcases…. And we filled them up. The amount of candy we got could last us over a year. It was ridiculous. I’m surprised I don’t have more cavities. And the houses that just left the candy bucket out with a sign that read, “Take one”…. Well, we totally would take more than one. One time we got caught too. It was funny. We went up to this house that left their candy out with the sign, only they had really good candy. Like Nerds, and chocolate, and these marshmallow pumpkins, and candy eyeball lollipops. I mean cool stuff! So, when we went up to the house, we started to take one of each type of candy, giggling really loudly the whole time, which is probably why we got caught. The people were actually home, and they opened the door just as we were each taking a handful of candy and shoving it in our pillowcase. We just kind of stared at them for a while…. Then we ran. We booked it outta there. It probably made us look worse but whatever, we got awesome candy from them.

As time went on, we trick-or-treated less and less and started instead doing these court parties. Our whole court would get together and have a nighttime BBQ. We’d have games like bobbing for apples, and “eat the donut without using your hands”, and tag. They were actually really fun. It was a great time to socialize and have fun for Halloween. Maybe that why I love Halloween so much. I’ve always had a great time. It’s never really been a boring holiday for me. I do kinda miss those times now I’m at college, but I’ll make the best out of Halloween this year:)

3 Days of Halloween. Day 1: A Very (not so) Scary Story

One of the things that I enjoy about the Halloween season is the terror that comes with it. For example, when I was really little we used to go to tons of haunted houses. I hated and loved them at the same time. The only one I didn’t actually like in any way was this really crappy one my family went to that was in the middle of nowhere. What made it so bad was that you could see the fake monster puppet thing before it popped out at you, thus making it not very scary. I mean, you couldn’t sink a little more money into this attraction to make it a little scarier? The only thing about that haunted house that made it slightly scary was the fact that the tour guide had a razor knife that he pulled on us. Haha, now that I think of it, he totally could have slit our throats and killed us because it was definitely a real knife. I mean it would be easy to hide the bodies because we were in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, that wasn’t the scariest, not scary haunted house I’ve been to. There was this one haunted house ride I went on that freaked me out way more. It wasn’t even that scary, or so I am told. I wasn’t able to really experience the ride because I freaked out too early and missed most of the actual “haunted” part. Let me explain. It was a cart ride, one where you sit in a cart and it takes you through the house and you see scary things that jump out at you and there is this scary music playing in the background to enhance the mood of scariness. I went on the ride with my younger cousin and her Dad. To get into the haunted house, the cart had to pass under these streamers that were meant to block out the light from outside. Well, I thought the streamers were part of the ride, and I thought that they were supposed to be snakes hanging from the ceiling. If you know how much I hate snakes, you wouldn’t be surprised how I reacted. I freaked out and wanted to get away from the “snakes”, so I managed to wiggle out of the safety bar, curl up in a little ball at the bottom of the cart, and close my eyes for the rest of the ride. I was like 7…. Give me a break. I think I scared the operators of the ride because the cart emerged from the haunted house with only 2 visible riders when it went in with 3. They probably thought I was running around the inside of the house lost and alone getting attacked by the evil spirits. Once they found out that I was just curled up at the bottom, I think they were more confused as to how I even got out of the safety bar in the first place. Lets just say that even though I like haunted houses, I usually freak out a little more than the average person. And that’s why I consider this was a very (not so) scary story!

I do have an actual scary story though. Well, more like creepy and hilarious and innocent and maybe a little bit scary. Have you ever heard of, or been to one of those things where you reach your hand into something and you feel spaghetti and they tell you it’s hair? Or peeled grapes are the eyes? You usually see these things at Halloween parties and stuff. Well, when I was still a Girl Scout, our Girl Scout troop hosted one of those things for some younger girl scouts. My best friend, Kathryn, and I were mad scientists and we had one of those “reach-in-and-feel” board things…. Only we got too into it. We had the normal peeled grapes for eyes, and spaghetti for hair, and frozen corn for teeth, but we also had a lot of other stuff. One of the holes that the girls had to reach into was labeled “Heart”. The girls would reach in and feel what felt like an actual heart and when they pulled their hand out, it would usually have a little bit of what looked like blood. It was blood, but they didn’t know that. You see, when they asked us, “Ewwww. What is that?” we would respond by saying, “A Heart”. Then, they would say, “No, I know what it’s supposed to be, but what is it really? It feels so real!” and we would respond, “It really is a heart. It’s a cow heart. And that is actually left over cow blood, so you should probably wash your hands when you’re done.” Then they would freak out a little because they weren’t sure if we were just really into our roles, or if we had actually made them feel a cow heart. I’ll let you in on a little secret. It was actually a cow heart. We had gone to the butchers the day before and bought a cow heart to put in the hole. The little innocent girls had actually felt a cow heart! Haha! Isn’t that disgusting, yet hilarious? I mean, what else were we supposed to use? We also had a cow’s liver for liver, and a sheep’s brain for brain. Gross, I know. But it made for probably the most intense and awesome “reach-in-and-feel” board ever! We may have made a few girls cry when they found out that we weren’t joking, but hey, it’ll be a great story for them to tell in the future!

The Statistics of Stat 220

Time professor spends....

How do I make it through this awesome 8 am class, you ask? Well my friends, this is My Secret :) Seriously.... try it. I would also like to add that my professor looks like Santa Claus.... with a shorter beard.