playing catchup.

(disregard zeke's dirty feet. whoops!)

I'm playing catchup with my blog and I'm starting clear back to October of 2014 and Halloween. First off, I went private with this blog yesterday. It felt good to go private. Truthfully, this blog has become my 'dear diary' if you will, but not to the point where it's too personal that I can't share it with my close friends and family who aren't near by anymore.  

I'm an old soul in the sense that I have an on-going battle with technology. There are so many perks to it but at the same time, I'm the one buying the book to hold in my hands as I read and then preserving it on the bookshelf once I'm finished, rather than deleting it off my Knook, or printing out my photos and putting them into photo albums or photo boxes and labeling who is in the photo, the date & location so I can physically hold and touch and go through these memories with my future children and their children. Or keeping somewhat of a journal where I can jot down my thoughts and memories and have it recorded in my actual handwriting rather than something typed up and printed from a computer. 

Although I will say, as one who is a perfectionist, I am all about detail and writing in my journal takes me a couple of hours to cram all my thoughts in there because I HAVE to get it all in there. I go crazy if I don't. Sometimes my mind races faster than my hand can write and I've noticed that my blog entries are loaded with a lot more detail and I have more information and memories jotted down and I know it's because I can almost type as fast as I can think. So... I'm back on this thing and I am also private because truthfully, I don't need to have people I don't know read about my personal business, my life at home, how I decorate my home, what we did for the holidays, the vacations we took, and so on so forth. I'm not out to gain fame, which has become the craze these days (and not that that is wrong, it's just not the road I'd like to take) and I don't feel the need to impress those I don't know with my so-called "lifestyle." I just want to focus on myself, and I want to jot it all down for history's sake and to keep in touch with those who matter most in my life. 

I plan on going private, slowly but surely with most social media outlets in my life sooner or later and I thought it would be best to start with the blog. Life is too short to spend your time caring about who liked what photo of yours, or who commented on what or who followed you today, or who unfollowed you yesterday and then compare your statistics to the girl next door. I admit, I've caught myself getting caught up into that whole crap and I didn't love the person I was becoming or the dumb thoughts that were beginning to consume my mind. 

I want to keep things safe and healthy. To live in the world but not be of the world. To live like I'm off the grid, but still stay connected. Basically, just not revolve my every day life around social media. I love to post, don't get me wrong - and I still will but I do try to be as genuine by posting my memories and photos with friends and family and photos of traveling, food & things that I am most passionate about - and that's okay too. I don't know where I am going with this but... I guess I'm just going to keep it more simple. 

Especially once kids roll in - everything is going private. And I do have some ideas up my sleeve concerning my artwork that would take place of the non-private areas of social media. 

But for now, here are just some photos of October of 2014 and Halloween. 

October In California.

One of my favorite months of the year is here. Obviously, seeing as how we are two and a half weeks into it. I haven't been as festive as I normally am, nor excited nor as obsessed; and I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around my abnormal Halloween behavior. But I know the root cause of it and there is someone/something to blame - and that's the state everyone and their mother drools over - CALIFORNIA.

I swear I'm celebrating Christmas in July. First off, the weather keeps getting warmer and warmer. I'm sweating throughout the night like a hog, and no leaves outside have changed color. Maybe, just maybe, it's because there are no actual trees in Santa Monica, only palm trees. And maybe, just maybe, the trees we do have last all year - everything is still in full bloom - roses, hydrangeas, you name it. I sound stupid, don't I? Doesn't it all sound like paradise, what I am describing to you?  It is, don't get be wrong. Someone still needs to slap me silly because I am constantly in awe with the beauty of this small city by the Sea, but seasons - I NEED SEASONS. I am such a holiday fanatic, and you cant play the part if you don't have the backdrop or else it feels like you're faking it.

It's hard too because no one here decorates for Halloween. For the most part, everyone is either single, older, or a student and most of the housing are apartments. But if you go a block or two north and you hit the high society and all the old money neighborhoods with their mansions - everything is gated or blocked by boxwoods and hedges so even if they did decorate, I couldn't see it to tell you that they do.

Zeke has even noticed my odd behavior. In the middle of September he kept asking, "Hey, where's the Halloween/Fall decor?" Wait, it's a week till October?! I thought it was JUNE! I truthfully kept forgetting it was fall. I feel like we are still in the midst of summer and that this has been the longest year of my life until I realize I only have two and a half more months of 2014 left. Then I begin to panic.

We still have yet to go to a pumpkin patch, or a haunted house or go ghost hunting. We have watched some scary movies and I did hang up bats in our house, as you can see above, but it's just not doing the trick. I force myself to wear a sweater but then I regret the decision as I am dying of heat and would rather put my swimsuit on and head to the beach. What a blindsided spoil brat I sound like, huh? But, the grass is always greener on the other side, I'm sure. Everyone with seasons and the perfect crisp fall breeze and aroma are thinking how they are so over it all and wish for the beach. Except, on my Instagram feed, that's not the vibe I'm getting. Everyone and their mother is apple picking, going on hayrides, collecting an ombre collection of fall leaves, decorating their porches with pumpkins, eating stew, you name it and they've got the backdrop to prove it's actually October.

Woe is me I guess. I'm starting to understand why people who are okay without seasons move out to sunny California- the weather is perfect year round.

it was a monster mash : halloween

Can you tell that this years Halloween was a straight up blast? I made sure to keep it more simple and not pull a fast one with a whoppin' murder mystery dinner like I did last year where I about keeled over and died. I also made sure to not play the role of a saint and make all of the food for every single soul who came - instead, we did potluck this year and it was genius- saved more money and more time and a lot of headaches.

Unfortunately, the Zoo was away in California for business, but I made sure a monster mash was still in hand. We had lions, Mary Poppins, cone-heads and skeletons in the haunted house. Monster music was blasting and at one point in time, we found ourselves monster mashing in a congo line doing out best Frankenstein moves. We were cracking ourselves up. Candles were lit amongst us, the mood was spooky and ghost stories were told. This is seriously one of my favorite pastimes.

Once midnight hit, we decided to jump in the car and chase some ghosts. We went to a gravity hill near the canyon and did the whole, "pour the flour on the hood of your car thing" and we didn't even move up the hill. I was disappointed to say the least especially since I grew up going to Booger Hill. You know, it's the whole gravity hill thing and whatever science tells you, I still believe in the supernatural part of it - it's part of the fun.

Booger Hill is out in the middle of nowhere where the road is surrounded by cotton fields and the sky is filled with stars. You ride to the top of the hill where two live oak trees stand still and where two slaves were hung from. The townspeople don't want anyone to know what they had done, so when you put your car in neutral, with all of the lights off and the windows rolled down and you slowly creep down that road, slowly but surely, the car starts moving backwards (some nights faster than others) but it's the townspeople pushing you up keeping you from knowing that they've hung the slaves. If you let your car be pushed back to the oak trees, legend has it, you'll die on your way home. Obviously, we've been too scared to let that happen. Heaven forbid would we ever let that happen!

It's those kinds of things I live for and I'm happy that we've got a whole entire month out of the year to purposely do those kinds of things (even though this is like my number one idea of something to do every weekend outside the month of October.) I'd say Halloween was a blast and it was a great way to end the month!

November 1st was spent taking down the decorations and though nothing pleases me more than a month full of Halloween decor throughout the whole house, it does feel really refreshing to take them down and have a clean home again. On to the next holiday, and by the next holiday, I mean Thanksgiving, NOT Christmas. For me, Christmas starts on December 1st and that's FINAL!

night of the living dead

Halloween has come and gone - it was the night of the living dead and I am literally whooped. My favorite day out of the year is over with and I think the highlights were waiting in line for an hour at Krispy Kreme for doughnuts. Sounds strange, I know, but everyone was in the Halloween spirit. And of course making a midnight trip to the graveyard. More to report when I wake up from my doughnut coma. Happy Halloween you ghouls.

hocus pocus

So I did it. I put together the Giovanna & Oscar de la Renta outfits and I think I look more like Winifred from Hocus Pocus. It works though, I think. Except now I think I want to do something else instead now... I had a little too much fun with the face paint and now I want to go into something more in depth. Typical, typical, typical!

Also, I think tonight should be called Hallows-eve since it is the eve of Halloween, don't you think?!?

BATtaglia Halloween!

This is Giovanna Battaglia (on the left), one of my all time favorite style icons. I really wish this photo wasn't so pixelated but you still get the point : she's halloween gone glam! Halloween is tomorrow and I am so ecstatic! Sadly, I am not totally myself this October.  This month has been crazy, as will the next and so on forth with mixing school in and packing up for the move. I've spent all of my spare Halloween time decorating the house and planning a Halloween Monster Mash but I have forgotten about my costume! Eek! How could I forget the main thing!?

With much thought, I always keep my Martha Stewart Halloween Guide Books, but the costumes in there are just too elaborate to put together in one night - so it's that kind of year where you sort of put on anything and everything that you own and you don't know what you are - until my style icon BATtaglia showed me the way: tricks for scoring the Halloween spirit at the last minute! Yep, I qualify for that. Don't you love her painted BATtaglia mask? This is when I wish I had sleek jet black hair like Gio. I still don't know what I'd say I was with this painted on my face but at least it has a Halloween vibe to it? Does it not? I've got this black and long twenties flapper dress I'll probably put on and then paint my face like this, paint my nails black, make my eyebrows black and wear a fun lipstick color and maybe to darken my blonde hair, I'll go get some black tulle fabric and wrap it around my head like Oscar de la Rentas models during this past fashion week. I would just get black hairspray paint but I'm too scared to do that. You're probably still wondering what I'd call myself, and I still don't know. I guess I could be a gothic Halloween flapper? Or I could be a gothic fortuneteller from the twenties?  I don't know, I don't know - I just want to look like Halloween so there it is.

It's so sad that I stress over this, but it is my favorite holiday so I can't fully blame myself. We will see how it goes! Happy Hallows-eve my witches!

witchy woman.

As of late, I have been bloated from apple cider and spend countless hours at night watching episode after episode of "The Munsters." Do you remember that show? It is from the 60's but it's the perfect vibe for what Halloween really feels like to me. The classic halloween music is in the show, everything is Halloween or monster related - they live in an old Victorian mansion with Gothic Medieval furniture and decor with cobwebs spinning all over the place. Not to mention the show is in black and white and to me - I don't know why, but that is really halloween to me. Anything old and classic - I feel like they understood it better back then.

The Zoo and I hit up a pumpkin patch this morning and plan on carving our pumpkins sunday night. I typically always try to out-do myself from the year before and do a carving that is so elaborate that I end up killing myself over it. Not this year, I kind of want to go more traditional and just do the classic jack-o-lantern grin. Last weekend we took my cousins to the Haunted Forest and it really was the perfect halloween vibe. The moon was full and creeping in through the dark woods as we walked along a haunted path lit by jack-o-lanterns and once again I felt like a child.

Tonight, we are going to put in a scary movie - Poltergeist. I remember watching this when I was younger with my dad and sisters. It scared the day lights out of me and its been so long since I've seen it, it'll be like watching it from the start all over again. I just can't get enough of October - it truly is one of my favorite months of the year.

Also, I think the wicked witch from the West is kind of legit.

halloween planning.

Last year for Halloween, I put together a murder mystery dinner for my friends. Looking back, it had to of been my most favorite Halloween to date in my Utah days. Although, I didn't really know how much work and money it was going to be until I was in too deep and couldn't back out. It was worth it nonetheless, and my friends had a blast but I don't plan on doing it again this Halloween.

Though, I MUST do something, as I live for Halloween! So I figured I would have friends over again but hold a little Halloween Potluck with halloween traditional games and monster mash music playing in the background. I want to make the mood spooky and eerie and light numerous candles and candles sticks and dim the lights!! BOO! I just want it to feel like halloween. And I intend on making it feel like so!

the beginnings of october.

So much black and orange and I love it! Halloween is my absolute favorite time of year, sometimes, I can't even stand it because I get so giddy over it! I always try my very best to make the month feel as how I felt as a child, or how I envisioned Halloween - or make it feel like they do in the Halloween movies.

You know as a child how every holiday seemed that much more extravagant or just a dramatic version of what it is as an adult? Does that make any sense? Well at every age, I've tried my best to not see the adult version of holidays and instead I become more of a kid again, and I go all out. I just wish towns would get more into holiday's and deck the crap out of the city, so that everywhere you went it just screamed Halloween and you couldn't escape the feeling.

So far, I have been to a fair share of halloween pumpkin patches, though I haven't purchased any pumpkins yet, because I seem to be hitting all of the expensive ones. That's when I should just go to the grocery store - but that takes all of the fun out of it. I've baked some witching hour sugar cookies while listening to halloween monster mash mixes and decorated my house with bats and spiders and witches hat garland. Sadly, my house just doesn't feel as Halloween as our old house did. That was much easier to do last year though, because we were living in that 1920's bungalow that already had a charming creep factor and so much character to work with. It's okay, I've done my best.

I have been painting A TON - with this being the last semester of school, it's a huge work load as I am really pushing myself to higher limits and this time around I am doing a large series of portraits. My first portrait is of a southern general from New Orleans and I am so proud of the turn out. I have never put that much work and detail into a painting and I am completely exhausted from it! Nonetheless, I have always wanted my own southern historical portrait and it was finished in time to hang up for Halloween and add a spooky southern mansion vibe to my home.

I've also been able to make my annual Halloween stop to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts because their Halloween doughnuts are my absolute favorite! I have to do it every year! I just have to! I still have so much left to do on my list. Tomorrow night we are doing a haunted house and watching a scary movie after. I still want to go apple picking in an orchard and we still obviously have to carve pumpkins and I can't even think about all of this - my head is going to explode! I JUST LOVE HALLOWEEN, and that's all. That's all.

monster mash.

also, one more side note on halloween/october : i am basically in love with this photo of frankie and his bride. if i was a monster and living in the 50's this would be me and my BOO (no pun intended). OKAY lets roll on out to NOVEMBER NOW!

spookiest month of the year.

holy cow, has it come and gone already!? October, one of my favorite months out of the year. Halloween, one of my favorite holidays out of the year. Both are gone and done, and I think they left in a BANG. Every October, I always pump myself up to go all out, make sure everything is halloween-o-fied, throw a murder mystery that i've been talking about for years, and by october 31, it all never seemed to add up quite how i had planned and envisioned. that doesn't mean my month of october wasn't spooky enough for me, because it always was one way or another. but this year, i finally gave it and really really put a lot of effort into making this october the best of the best. i ditched the provo halloween parties that never made it feel like halloween. i decked the crap out of the bungalow and had a blast doing it with the zoo. i love that he loves halloween just as much as i do. and by golly, i finally forced myself to purchase a murder mystery kit and i did it, i threw one. it was more work that i figured it would be, and i regretted putting it together while planning, but once it was all said and done, and my party people showed up to the "haunted manor" with accents, outfits and their acting gear, i was very much pleased and filled with more excitement than ever! the murder mystery was a HIT and I was so glad i finally went through with it. It makes me want to throw one EVERY hallows eve now!

This month I was able to visit haunted houses, challenge myself to carving new pumpkins, the zoo and i watched countless halloween classics as well as alfred hitchcock's, the twilight zones and of course, the original 'house on haunted hill.' and for the first time ever, i was able to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood! now THAT really made it feel like halloween, a classic night. i have ultimately decided that krispy kreme halloween doughnuts are my favorite halloween treat, aside from candy corn, and my boyfriend is frankenstein every single october of the year. well, as sad as it is that october is long and gone now, i will say, november will be nice to sit back and relax. sadly, thanksgiving is a holiday i don't tend to go all out on so its a great month to take a breather and eat chocolate pies and mashed potatoes. also, what is even more sad, is i skip the thinking and excitement of christmas once halloween is over. instead, I jump ahead, way ahead and now i can't stop thinking of july and how im going to decorate for the 4th! here's to the holidays! i hope you all had a safe and spooky halloween!

the gangs all here!

C.R., Alberta, Sam, London, Dr. Dijon, Shugga, Paul, Rita, Alby, Cougar, Mister Crimson, Principal Amethyst, Willy, Kara, Tele, Sally, Marci, Doris, Sylvia and James : THE GANGS ALL HERE! For a murder at the Anonville Manor, that is! That's right the players have come to play as the zoo and I have officially sent out the invitations to take my friends back to the 1950's and treat them to a halloween party in honor of the grand re-opening of the Anonville Manor, a hotel that is known for it's hauntings and ghosts. Hopefully all of my guests are ready to dine and laugh on all Hallow's Eve and keep safe from the ghouls that roam the hallways of my hotel. Wish me luck on throwing my first Murder Mystery Party! I hope it to be a hoot and a hollar!

mysterious and spooky month of halloween.

my favorite month has arrived. and on a spooky spooky level. the zoo and i have been having a ball decorating our home with skeletons and witches! i love everything about october. sometimes i can't even describe my love for it. but im really excited that the zoo is just as pumped as i am. we'll continue to decorate some more tonight, but the weekend we will have a blow out along with a haunted house attack and more! happy haunting!