Tag Archives: Halloween

It’s Halloweentime! (or Another Disney Afternoon)

Posted on September 29, 2017 | 1 comment

It seems like it has been forever since I was at Disneyland, but it was only about a month ago that I was there. But since that day was a short visit I felt due for another Disney day. This time, my friend Dani was out-of-town working so Michelle and I went just the two of us. It’s weird to be missing a member of our usual Disney group, but Dani understood that we wanted a Disney outing and didn’t mind that we went without her.

Michelle and I went after I had my Orangetheory workout that morning, which is the usual routine. But that also means that we get to the parks around 1pm. But that worked out well because we didn’t have a big plan for the day. We knew all the Halloween decorations were up and all the Halloween overlays were on rides, so that’s pretty much all we focused on doing.

Right when we got to the parks, we made a quick lunch stop for corn dogs and we found out that our friend Lauren was on her way to Disneyland too! So we waited there for her to meet us before we headed to our first ride of the day. Space Mountain is a favorite of mine in whatever form the ride is in. I love the classic ride, the Hyperspace Mountain version, and the Ghost Galaxy version that they have at Halloween. It was a perfect first ride for the day. We were trying to think of a funny ride photo pose, but I think we all missed what the others were saying. I thought we were going to pretend that we were in a shampoo commercial where someone seems way too happy to have their hair washed.

After that, we decided to go on something a bit slower. The Rivers Of America had opened up the last time we were there, but we rode the train around to see things. This time, we decided to go on the Mark Twain boat to see everything else that we missed. We found the perfect place to relax on the second level in the front and we got to admire what an amazing day it was.

And there were a lot of details around the river that we saw that you can’t see from the train. My favorite was this animatronic beaver that is under the bridge the train goes over. It’s chewed through one plank and is working through another.

I love that Disney adds all those cute details and it makes it so that there are always new things to discover. The ride around was the perfect way to relax before our next Halloweentime ride: Haunted Mansion Holiday.

This overlay is not just for Halloween, but I still think of it as a Halloween thing. They always do a great job for the ride and there are new things added each year. And I love to see what the gingerbread house looks like each year.

After that, we decided to walk over to California Adventure. There was a Halloween party on the Disneyland side and we wanted to switch to the other park before it got too crazy. And our first stop on the other side was our new favorite: Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout.

They also have a Halloween overlay, but they only do it at nighttime. But that was perfect for us since this ride is still so new to us that we wanted to ride it the normal way too. After the ride, we had a decent amount of time to wait before the nighttime version started. So we did some shopping and some artwork.

My Scrooge McDuck is the one in the middle that looks weird and cross-eyed. We then headed over to Starbucks to sit and relax and we ended up meeting up with my friend Christopher and his wife who were in the park that day too! Lauren ended up having to leave after that and Michelle and I headed back to Guardians of the Galaxy to ride the nighttime version.

This version reminded us both of the old Tower of Terror ride. The new ride doesn’t feel as much as a drop ride as Tower did. But the nighttime version was totally a drop ride again! Since it was totally new to us, we didn’t know what to expect. And when we were at the top where they take the photo, it took forever before it dropped so Michelle and I kept glancing at each other while we were in our photo pose.

We had gotten Fastpasses for the Guardians ride again and had some more time to wait. So we headed over to Cars Land to get some dinner and check out the new Halloween decorations they had in that area.

And then we were back at Guardians for another ride. The nighttime version only has 1 song (the daytime version has 6 songs each with their own ride pattern) so we were a bit more prepared for the ride. But being prepared and knowing what happens doesn’t make it any less fun for us. We both had a blast riding it!

And when we were done with the ride, the park had closed. We took our time walking out because it’s so fun looking at everything at nighttime. I loved the exterior of the Guardians ride and how it reminded me of the Tower of Terror.

And once we left, we got to check out the decoration at the gate too. We saw it during the day, but it’s much more impressive lit up at night.

Even though we didn’t do a ton of rides, it still felt like a full Disney day. We got all the rides in that we wanted to and we had a blast. I’m hoping to make it back to the parks sometime in October so that I can see all the Halloween stuff one more time, but if I don’t make it at least I got to see it this week!

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Posted in Fun Stuff

Tagged California Adventure, Disney, Disneyland, friends, Halloween, rides, theme park

Working On My Crafty Side (or Starting Off Halloween Season!)

Posted on September 20, 2017 | Comments Off

I love Halloween. I don’t know if it started because of working at Halloween Horror Nights or the amazing Halloween parties that my friends have thrown, but I love Halloween time. I remember when I was growing up that my parents would get the Halloween box out of the garage and we would spend an afternoon decorating the outside of the house. Now that I’m in my house, I really don’t decorate the outside but I’ve tried to be better about decorating the inside. I’m not the most crafty person, but I’m good at shopping and have found some cute decorations that work in my house.

But my friend Anne is probably one of the most crafty people I know and is amazing at decorating! She decorates her house based on the season and changes out things seasonally so that everything reflects what she is decorating for! I met Anne when I went to the blogger event a few years ago about the Hard Rock Cafe 5K and we’ve stayed in touch ever since then. We don’t get to see each other that often, so when she invited me to a crafting party at her house, I immediately RSVPed yes!

The plan was to decorate styrofoam pumpkins and she would have all the crafting supplies for us. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t know what to do with the pumpkin but I knew there would be so many creative people there that I could learn from and hopefully I would be inspired and could make something cute.

When I got to the party, Anne had all the crafting supplies out by the tables she set up. I was so impressed by everything that she had for us and even more impressed that this was all stuff that she already had in her house!

There were so many things on the table to use to decorate the pumpkins! I honestly didn’t know where to start. The only thing I knew I didn’t want to use was glitter because it gets everywhere and I try to not have glitter things in my house (I guess that proves I’m not into crafts since I don’t like glitter). But there were so many paint options, ribbons, gems, door knobs to use as stems, and other things to choose from so not using glitter wasn’t going to limit me.

Other people started to grab paint, glitter, and other things to decorate and I took a moment to observe and see what everyone else was doing. A lot of people were painting their pumpkins another color and then were going to work on decorating on top of that, but I knew that it wouldn’t be what I would do. So I took a look carefully at the supplies table and got inspired by some gem-type ribbon. Anne got a glue gun out for me so I could glue it down, I grabbed some gems to go with the ribbon, and I started working.

I covered the stem of the fake pumpkin with the ribbon and then wrapped it around and glued it down. Then I took some of the gems and put them randomly around the pumpkin. I was liking how it looked and decided that because I’m such a big Disney nerd that I needed to add a few hidden Mickeys to my pumpkin. And I was so happy with the end result!

It’s the perfect mix of Halloween and Disney and it will look so cute on my dining room table! And it’s simple enough that as I get more decorations that it should still work with everything. And because Anne had so many extra pumpkins, I took another one and took colored gems to create a pumpkin that was just Mickeys.

As expected, everyone else was so creative! The pumpkins looked like things you would buy in a store and we joked that we should create a shop to sell what we made. I wish I could be as creative and crafty as everyone else, but that’s just not a skill I have right now. I probably could be better if I worked on it, but I don’t have a lot of opportunity to do that.

And when everyone was all done, we had to get all the pumpkins together for a photo. That’s what happens when you are in a room of bloggers, social media specialists, and marketers.

I do feel like mine are the least fancy of the bunch, but I am still proud of what I made and that they did turn out cute. I was not competing with others to make the best pumpkin, I just wanted to do something that I could be proud of and that didn’t look ugly. I accomplished both of those goals.

I’m so glad that I went to the pumpkin party because I got to meet so many amazing people and I got to spend an afternoon being creative. Even though my creativity isn’t usually in crafting, any time I get to be creative is a good thing for me. And it helped me kick off Halloween season early so now I can take the rest of my Halloween decorations out and start getting my house into the Halloween spirit!

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Posted in Crafts, Fun Stuff

Tagged crafts, decorating, friends, Halloween, party

Low-Key Halloween (or A Work In Progress)

Posted on November 2, 2016 | 1 comment

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but this past Halloween I was feeling a bit down. While my stomach was pretty much completely better by then, I was still feeling off and the night of my friend’s Halloween party I was pretty exhausted. But even though I was feeling not myself, I wasn’t going to miss what I knew would be an epic Halloween party!

The party was held on Saturday night (so most people didn’t have to work the next morning) and originally I thought I would have to work that night before the party. Since that’s what I though my schedule was like, I planned a costume that would be easy to do going from work. But then the week before, I found out I wasn’t needed anymore that day, so I had all the time I wanted to get ready for the party. I debated changing my costume, but I decided to go with my original idea.

I saw an idea for this costume online, but I changed it up a bit to make it my own. But all it took was some caution construction tape and a hard hat to turn me into a work in progress! It’s not my best costume, but it made me happy and I liked that it wasn’t something that was obvious right away. Plus, I felt cute and that is so important when you aren’t feeling totally like yourself.

halloween-costume

Every year, Marie and Chris make their parties bigger and better. They said that they were going to tone things down a bit this year, but clearly that plan went out the window! As soon as I got to the party, I saw that they turned their back patio area into a huge carnival tent!

circus-tent

Inside of the tent, they had different little rooms set up with seating and lots of old carnival posters.

in-the-tent

And they had a photo set up with a stage advertising a freak show!

freak-show

It was incredible! They put months of work into the party and I know all of us are so grateful that they love to host and do these insane parties! And none of us expected them to go as big as they did this year, so I think everyone was extra surprised when they saw all the work in the backyard.

Because I was feeling a bit low, I spent most of my time sitting down and talking with friends. But that was perfectly fine with me. We got to have a lot of fun conversation about our costumes, we discussed politics (which I love because we can have a polite debate), and several people asked me how I was doing and what was going on with my liver.

And as always, they had amazing food at the party. Most of it was stuff that I knew I shouldn’t have, so I tried to eat before going to the party. But fortunately someone made meatloaf with mashed potatoes on top (it almost looked like a cake) so I was able to eat something and feel like I wasn’t missing out on too much.

I really wanted to be more social than I was especially since there were friends there that I hadn’t seen in a while, but after being at the party for about an hour or so I started to feel a bit worse. I took it easy and tried to relax while sitting down and that helped the odd feeling go away. But I also knew it as a sign that this wasn’t going to be a party that I was going to be at for as long as I would have liked.

I ended up leaving around 10pm (I had been there about 3 hours) and unfortunately I ended up missing the costume contest. But everyone else there had such incredible costumes that I knew there was no way I was going to win or place, so I was ok missing it. I’m just glad that I got to be there for a few hours to see my friends and the super creative costumes that they made!

It was a low-key Halloween party, but it was perfect with me. And as far as what I did on the actual day of Halloween, that will be tomorrow’s post!

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged costumes, friends, Halloween, party

A Busy Halloween (or Dressing As A Box Office Employee)

Posted on November 3, 2015 | 1 comment

I love having fun on Halloween, and I had been looking forward to the party that my friends throw for months! I knew I’d have to work on Halloween morning from 8-11 for my at home box office job, but I then found out that I would need to be working at my other random box office job not only on Halloween but the next day as well. So my plans for doing a fun costume ended because I knew that I’d be working a lot that day and wouldn’t want to change after work before going to the party. And I knew that my time at the party would be limited since I’d have to work the next day (and even though the clocks “fell back” I needed to get up early in the morning).

My jobs went pretty easily. The first job was a bit busy with everyone hoping to get into the sold out Halloween shows, but since we cannot add seats to shows all my customer calls were pretty fast. The second box office job was a bit crazier since it was a sold out show and we had to make sure that everyone sat in their assigned seats, but overall it went pretty smoothly.

I don’t have to dress fancy for the random box office job, just nice casual. So that evening I was wearing jeans, a nice top, and some boots. And I had a headband with cat ears on it that I added to my outfit when I got to Chris and Marie’s house.

Not the most creative outfit, but I joked to everyone that my outfit was “box office employee” and everyone understood that I was coming straight from work.

Marie and Chris really outdid themselves this year with the party. The house and backyard were themed to Jurassic Park. They had lots of dinosaur themed things around including cardboard dinosaurs stalking the party.

They even made a jeep with a t-rex chasing in the background. They made sure that the side mirrors had a picture of a t-rex in them too!

Of course, I had to take advantage of that amazing photo opportunity to have a great party picture!

Even without being in a decent costume, I still had a great time on Halloween. Getting to hang out with my friends is always fun and I loved seeing all the creative costumes everyone came up with (I didn’t stay for the costume contest so I don’t have pictures of the winners). Even though this is a very competitive group with costumes, nobody judges anyone for showing up without a costume. So even though I felt bad for my lack of costume, nobody really cared.

I don’t have a ton of stories about the Halloween party because it really was just a fun hangout with everyone. Some of the people at these parties are people I only see at the parties so I tried to make sure I take the time to catch up and socialize with them. And since I had to leave before it got too late (because I was tired, had to work the next morning, and I wanted to get on the road before too many people thought about driving drunk), I didn’t do much more than hang out.

The next great party that should be at Chris and Marie’s will be the New Years Eve party (unless a scheduling issue comes up and they can’t have that party). And after that will be the Oscars party where I know I want to have an amazing costume. But even though those parties are a few months away, I have the awesome photos from Halloween to look at and make me smile until then.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged busy, friends, Halloween, job, party, work

Surviving Hell Week (or I’m A Liar)

Posted on November 2, 2015 | 2 comments

Remember how last week I said that I knew I’d only get 3 workouts in for the week because of my schedule?

I totally lied.

I went into Hell Week with the intention of only doing 3 workouts until on Monday I found out that it was 4 Hell Week Workouts to earn the shirt (I thought it was 4). So I decided to suck it up and do 4 workouts to get my shirt.

Monday’s workout was Dead Man’s Row. I knew this would be the 23 minute row day, and I was terrified. I made sure that my rowing segment was first so I could get it done with, and then I’ll do my best with the floor work.

I’m still getting used to the 7:30am workouts so I was pretty exhausted going in. And doing that long row didn’t perk me up. But there was a plan with push rows and recovery rows, and I did my best to follow along with that.

I didn’t have much of a goal for my row. I just wanted to beat my row of about 3300 meters from last year. And when my 23 minutes were up, I was pretty darn excited to see that I did 4142 meters!

I don’t remember much about the floor workout after that except that one of the floor moves was a low row on the straps and I felt that that was extremely mean to do when we had a 23 minute row.

Tuesday (the extra day I added) was The Hills Run Red. I thought it was be a really tough hill day for me, but it ended up not being too bad. All the treadmill segments were on inclines, but they were all sprints that were about a minute or less. Between sprints we had to go on the rower (I wasn’t happy about 2 rowing days in a row), and I managed to do 3000 meters on the rower then! While I was happy that I’m getting better and better at the rower, I was ready for a few rower-free days.

Wednesday was The Silence of the Lambs (or Legs depending on where you read it). Yes, this was a leg day and there were a bunch of squats and lunges to do. And yes, there was more rowing!

After 3 workouts in a row, I was ready for a rest day so I was happy taking Thursday off. But I was back on Friday for day 4 (my first 4 workout week since my calf injury!). That day was The Final Destination and again it involved the rower! There were 2 rowing segments (400 and 800 meters) so those felt almost like sprints. And the treadmill had 4 segments at either .13 miles or .25 miles so that wasn’t too bad.

The floor that day was crazy. It was a single 23 minute floor block and it was so tough! There were lunges, squats, burpees, full body pull ups, and speed skaters. I had to take several breaks in those 23 minutes, but I got the entire routine done so that was good enough for me.

Doing 4 days of Hell Week exhausted me, but I proved to myself that while my calf might not be totally healed, I can get back to 4 workouts in a week if I have the time. I won’t be doing that this week because of my race, but I’m going to try to do that again soon so I can get as many workouts in this year as possible!

I seriously had the best time with Hell Week this year. Last year it terrified me for a couple of reasons. First, I was still pretty new to Orangetheory so I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle the workouts. I proved that I can totally do it. And last year Hell Week was the first time I did 3 workouts in a row. Again, I can totally do it. While I was worried about how I would do in the workouts this year, I got to have more fun than stress. I loved pushing myself to new limits and seeing the awesome costumes that the coaches wore.

Yes, in that second picture I’m standing on top of a rower to be almost as tall as Coach Bruce.

I’m actually excited for Hell Week for next year. I know that there will be more challenges before next Hell Week, but I like having that as a standard thing to hold myself to. If there is another 23 minute row, I know what distance I want to beat. I know how I felt in the workouts this year and I want to push myself more next year. I’ve got a year to train for Hell Week 2016, and I’m already starting to get ready!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged challenge, fitness, goals, Halloween, Orangetheory, rowing, workout

A Speedy Disneyland Day (or Getting My Halloween Rides In)

Posted on October 8, 2015 | Comments Off

When I’ve got a free Monday, I go to Disneyland. It’s one of the advantages of having an annual pass. And since I won’t have a free Monday again until December (I’m going to be in a class on Mondays for a while), I had to take a trip to the parks this week to see all the Halloween fun.

I went with the same friend that I’ve done my past few trips to Disneyland with since she lives around the block from me and we have similar attitudes on being laid back in the parks.

We got the parks around noon and it was really crowded. I wasn’t expecting a Monday during the school year to be that bad, but it reminded me of a Monday in the middle of the summer. Maybe some local school districts had the day off?

As soon as we got into Disneyland we knew our game plan was pretty much to do the Halloween rides first and then see what we want to do after that. But first, we had to make our traditional first stop and get a Dole Whip!

It was nice to be able to enjoy the Dole Whip and not have to eat it super quickly because it was melting. We sat in the shade and enjoyed our treats before heading to our first ride of the day.

Even though the Haunted Mansion has their holiday overlay of The Nightmare Before Christmas from Halloween until Christmas, I try to go on it once during Halloween and once during Christmas (at least). We ended up getting stopped on the ride a couple of times, so I was able to get some pictures of the ride without worrying too much that I was ruining someone’s experience on the ride.

Our next ride was going to be Space Mountain to see the Ghost Galaxy overlay, so we rode the train around from Haunted Mansion to Tomorrowland. The train is going to be closed for at least a year starting in January, and I love it a lot so I’m going to try to ride it each time I’m in the parks before it closes down.

I’ve missed going on Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy most years, so I’m glad I got to ride it this week. I swear that the ride was so much faster than it usually is and it was a lot darker so I couldn’t see the track at all even though we were sitting in the front of the ride.

And of course, we had to do a silly pose for the photo (we were trying to hula dance to celebrate our love for Dole Whips).

After that, we decided to head to the Disneyland Hotel for some lunch at Trader Sams and rode the monorail over to Downtown Disney (I was feeling a bit lazy that day). This was my second time at Trader Sams and it was just as fun as it was last time. I still didn’t get a drink, but one day I will try one of their fun and festive drinks.

While we were sitting and enjoying our lunch, we both realized that we were exhausted. I had found out while at Disneyland that I had an audition with 7 page audition and she had a class that she was thinking of attending that evening. So even though we only rode a few rides and we would potentially be hitting rush hour traffic home, we decided to call it a day.

But we did make one more stop before going back to the car. The last time we were there, we saw these churro ice cream sandwiches in Downtown Disney and thought they looked yummy. We didn’t get them then, but we decided to try them this time.

What we didn’t realize is that the churro ice cream sandwiches need to be assembled by you and the ice cream is just a container of it (and not easy to scoop out with a plastic spoon).

I ate one part of the churro and tried to brush the cinnamon sugar on to the ice cream to have that second. It wasn’t quite an ice cream sandwich, but it was pretty yummy. I just don’t think that I’ll be getting that again (it was also way too much food!).

Even though this was a super short trip to Disneyland, I got my Halloween rides in and had fun with a friend. And while I won’t be able to make it back on a Monday until December, I might try to go on a Sunday sometime in the next month or two. I’ll know going into that trip that it will probably be very crowded but at least I know I can have fun when I only do one or two rides. It gets me my Disneyland fix.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged Disney, Disneyland, Halloween, rides, theme park

Halloween Hangout (or I’m Just A Regular Puppet)

Posted on November 5, 2014 | Comments Off

With Halloween being on a Friday evening and my earliest work shift being on Saturday morning, I had to do some planning so I could enjoy going out that evening.

The first step was to switch my Friday workout to Thursday so I could have time after work to get my costume ready (and not have to shower and change after a workout). Then I made a plan to go to the party early and try to leave on the early side as well.

Not all of my plan worked.

The party was held at my friends Chris and Marie’s house (where all the best parties are!). It’s about an hour drive away from me in traffic so since the party started at 7, I had a plan to try to leave around 6.

I spent a lot of time getting ready. I had seen a marionette costume on the Party City website, and after trying to figure out if I could build the headpiece on my own, I ended up just ordering it (this was about a month ago). Then I did a lot of research online about marionette makeup. I’m not a great makeup person, so I tried really hard. And this is what I came up with.

I know that a lot of the makeup tutorials online were more detailed, but my makeup supply isn’t too extensive and I didn’t want to have to buy a ton of makeup (I did have to buy that eyeliner to make the mouth lines).

My costume was impossible to drive in, so as soon as I parked I got into my costume and headed inside. Everyone seemed to love my outfit.

I don’t always go really elaborate with costumes (due to a lack of creativity and money), but this one seemed to be a winner with everyone.

The only thing was every kept asking me if I was some sort of special puppet or just a regular puppet. I wish I had worn a shirt that said “I’m just a regular puppet”.

The party was a huge success and there were so many people in awesome costumes there. Even the rainstorm didn’t affect the party atmosphere.

For the costume contest, I didn’t make the top 3, but I did get some votes. So that’s better than most years.

I had a plan to try to leave by 11pm, but the costume contest didn’t really start until after midnight. So I left a bit later than expected, but there was no traffic coming home and somehow I managed to get to bed quickly so I wasn’t too exhausted working in the morning.

Thanks again to Marie and Chris for being the most amazing hosts! They seriously do such great parties that I would be scared to have a party at my house because I know that it will have no chance at being as great as what they do!

I only got a picture with Marie that evening, so sorry Chris that I don’t have a picture of us to put on here. I think you were too busy being a great host and making sure everyone had an awesome time!

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged costumes, friends, Halloween, party, winner

Low Key Halloween (or Costume Flashback)

Posted on November 4, 2013 | Comments Off

My Halloween wasn’t all too exciting. First of all, I had a full shift at work. We usually work evening shifts on Thursdays but we switched to an early shift so we’d all have time to go out after work (plus, we didn’t want to be calling people while they were out trick-or-treating with their kids).

Work was ok. The co-worker who hates me was not as mean to me as she was the other day. She still mumbled whenever I said something and made it seem as if I was completely unwelcome at work, but the horrible name calling did stop. I’m applying for new jobs every day, but it’s very hard to find something that pays enough and has the flexibility for auditions. But I’m trying.

I did dress up on Halloween. I figured why not? But I did pick a costume that didn’t look too outrageous while I was working. I decided to go as Minnie Mouse.

Yes, I wore the hooded scarf I bought the last time I was at Disneyland! While I was working, I just kept the hooded scarf off to the side (I really couldn’t make phone calls while I was wearing it). And without the hooded scarf, my outfit seemed pretty normal so I blended in with my work (where only 2 other people dressed up).

This technically is a repeat costume for me since I went as Minnie Mouse for Halloween once as a little kid.

I think if I could combine the dress I wore as a kid with my hooded scarf, that would be an amazing costume!

After work, I met some friends at Bodega Wine Bar (where I had my 30th birthday party). We were there during happy hour so we took advantage of the cheap drinks and food. While there were a couple of people dressed up for Halloween at the bar, not everyone was in costume.

After some drinks and food, we all headed home. I didn’t want to be up too late since I had an early shift at work the next morning, plus I wanted to be off the road before there were a lot of drunk drivers out. I was home around 9:30 and enjoyed the rest of my Halloween relaxing and watching “Grey’s Anatomy”.

While in some ways I wish I had had a crazy fun Halloween night, I’m okay that I did something low-key. Halloween can be stressful and right now, I don’t need to add any more stress to my life.

The only regret I have about my Halloween is that I didn’t get too many opportunities to wear a costume this year. I missed out on my favorite Halloween party this year so that was one fewer costumed outing than I thought I’d have this year. I’ll just have to make up for it next year.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged costumes, Disneyland, Halloween, Santa Monica, wine

Acting Like A Grownup (or Missing Out On Fun)

Posted on October 28, 2013 | 1 comment

I love Halloween. Besides my birthday, it’s probably my favorite holiday of the year. I’m not sure why I love it so much, but I do. And I have no idea if I loved Halloween as much as a kid as I do now. If my mom is reading today, maybe she’ll let me know.

There is one Halloween party that I go to pretty much every single year since I moved to LA. It’s the party that Marie and Chris throw. They go all out with their costumes and really are amazing party hosts. I try to do great costumes every year, but I seem to never be able to compete with how amazing all my friends’ costumes are. But I think that I’ve had some cute costumes the past few years.

Little Red Riding Hood (with wolf head in the basket)

Swine Flu (this was a last-minute costume)

Where’s Waldo?

This is one of the few parties that I look forward to all year-long. The only years I’ve missed it in the past were the couple of years I worked at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios and worked until 3am. So of course, I’ve been trying to plan what my costume would be for this year. I had it down to a couple of options (I was leaning toward using my “Let’s Make A Deal” pig in a blanket one again) but I knew it was going to be something simple because I had a 5K early the next morning.

On Friday, I was feeling a bit off. I overslept and barely made it to my 9am work shift (I’m lucky that I live close to work). I just figured it was my body getting adjusted to work again. And on Saturday, I was starting to have the sniffles.

I wanted to go out, but I couldn’t risk getting sick. Not only did I have the 5K on Sunday, I needed to work because I’m missing so many days in the next month.

So I made the adult choice: I missed the Halloween party. It wasn’t the fun choice, but I know that it was the right one. I’m sad, but I’ve been enjoying looking at the photos that everyone from the party has been posting on Facebook.

I still have Halloween to dress up (and I’ll be going to a happy hour after work so I might do some sort of costume). And of course, now I’ve got a year to plan the best costume ever for next year!

1 Comment

Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged 5K, costumes, Halloween, party, sick

It’s Halloween Time! (or Another Disneyland Outing)

Posted on October 3, 2013 | Comments Off

While I am looking for a new job while I’m unemployed right now, I’m also trying to make sure that I have fun before I either get a new job or go back to working 6 days a week at my old one.

So yesterday since I didn’t have much I had to do, I decided to go to Disneyland to check out the Halloween decorations and rides.

The last time I was at Disneyland was when I went with Lindsey Kelk, so it has been a while. And I love seeing all the Halloween decorations and flowers in the park.

I didn’t really plan on going on a bunch of rides (I’m going back on Sunday with some other people), but I wanted to focus on riding the things that I love and want to do while it’s in Halloween mode.

My first stop was the Haunted Mansion. For Halloween through Christmas, it is decorated in “The Nightmare Before Christmas” mode.

This was the 13th year that they have done this holiday overlay, so there were some new features on the ride.

I love how they decorated the outside of the ride and put bows on all the headstones in the line area. I especially liked the bow on the top of this squirrel.

I really liked the new things on the ride. There were a bunch of changes to the elevator portion as well as the hallway you walk through to get to the ride. I’m sure I’ll be going on this again because it is this overlay through Christmas.

But one overlay that is only there for Halloween is at Space Mountain. They turn this ride into Ghost Galaxy and I’ve only gone on it a few times this way (I’m normally not able to make it to the park at Halloween). I got to sit in the last row of the coaster (my favorite!) and I took a quick selfie before the ride started.

This overlay is pretty fun. I liked the ghost projections throughout the ride and it really does feel different from the typical Space Mountain.

After those two rides, I took a roundtrip on the Monorail. I love going on the Monorail as it gives a nice look at a majority of the park. It also allowed me to take this amazing picture of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and the Matterhorn.

After the roundtrip and coming back to Tomorrowland, I headed over to the Disneyland Railroad. This is another thing I love! When you ride the railroad between Tomorrowland and Main Street, you get to go through the Grand Canyon Diorama. The diorama has been a part of Disneyland since 1958 and it’s something that my mom remembers from when she was young. I love getting to see this almost-original part of Disneyland and it is a way to get around the park.

After exiting the railroad at Main Street, I decided to head home. The after-school crowd was starting to come into the park and I had gone on the rides that I really wanted to go on. But going to Disneyland is a nice way to spend an afternoon (and get a lot of walking in!).

I’m excited to be back at the park in a couple of days!

Comments Off on It’s Halloween Time! (or Another Disneyland Outing)

Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff

Tagged Disneyland, Halloween, theme park

Tag Archives: Halloween

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