Dress appropriately. Don’t disappoint me.
Tag: Halloween
“I need to ask you to come over and clean my house,” Chief exclaimed when he saw my outfit today.
“Sir?”
“You’re supposed to be a cleaner, right? Or a housekeeper?”
Quoth I, cheerfully but not without a bit of spice, “I am the exact opposite of a housekeeper.”
“I’ll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.”
~Author Unknown
People really get into the spirit of Halloween on our humble campus, and what’s really valued is creativity. No “sexy Mrs. Potato Heads” here if you please, we want to see you come up with something clever! And I fail almost every time to remember my camera. Some bloggers live to Instagram, kittens, and I struggle with not dropping smartphones. C’est la vie.
So far I’ve seen:
Ash Ketchem and Pikachu (of Pokemon fame), couples costume
The Doctor (as interpreted by David Tennant)
Zombies, as a group
A spider
Robin Hood
A wizard
Snow White
A bumblebee
Far too many girls in cat ears with whiskers drawn on their face
Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz
Minnie Mouse
At least three people with name tags reading “Maybe”
A Lego brick
Dressing up is something I still love and plan on enjoying until age and infirmity take me. This year I’m Rosie the Riveter. We’ll see if we get around to documenting it. We can do it!
“Halloween is huge in my house and we really get into the ‘spirits’ of things.”
~Dee Snider
It snowed for the first time the other day, and I’ve had to scrape off the car two days in a row. As George R.R. Martin would quip, winter is coming! We’re less than a week away from November, which means less than a month until we spend a week with my clan for Thanksgiving! Marie and her husband James might be spending the holiday with us (you will recall that I forcibly kidnapped them and forced them to spend Christmas with us last year – or just invited them, whatever…), and Gio will be in town as well. I cannot wait! But, as I’m forever lecturing, one holiday at a time, let’s enjoy the last week of October and its black and orange drenched goodness first. I found some Halloween-ish links for you this week, minions, enjoy!
This little girl is fantastic!
Here’s a lovely little program on P.G. Wodehouse, one of my favorite comedic authors, courtesy of Kate Beaton at Hark, A Vagrant!
In a jam? Feel bad about yourself? Friend putting him/herself down? Never fear!
Interesting to ponder on.
Halloween is next week, but goodness those vendors are all afire to get their Christmas decor up, eh? If you insist on skipping holidays, minions, let’s at least keep the food traditional.
I’ve been in Paris many times before…but now I must go back.
Mum lived in Japan as a girl and collects Asian antiques and pieces to this day, so I’ve always appreciated the art. I especially like the woodblock tradition…although (in the spirit of Halloween) I’ve got to be honest, these sort of give me the willies.
The National Trust has about a million Pintrest boards, but this one is seasonal appropriate, I feel.
Speaking of, murder spot uncovered? Paging Scarlett!
Let’s laugh at the expense of these gentlemen, shall we?
The weekly sheep, gearing up for Halloween.
“I’m going as your mom.”
“And I’m going as your dad.”
“And I’m going…to therapy.”
– The Fairly Odd Parents
Costumes spotted on campus:
Captain Jack Sparrow (in swaggering, drunken form)
Mario riding a papier-mâché Yoshi
Pumpkins
Ninja Turtle
An 18th century girl
Mummy
Cinderella
Steampunk galore
Batman
The King (of Burger King fame)
Hermione Granger
Hobbit (in bare feet, the freezing idiot)
Doctor
The Doctor (which is not the same thing as a normal doctor. Is it, fellow geeks?)
The medieval club in full regalia
And a whole host of babies dressed up as everything under the sun (the cutest is Janssen’s darling little cheeky monkey, even if they weren’t technically on campus)
I was thwarted, I had two really good costume ideas and wasn’t able to find crucial components to either of them. Next year, dumplings. True to expectation, Hennessy and I ran to the university bookstore on a break, and the red and green are already on display. Le sigh.
“If you go to a costume party at your boss’s house, wouldn’t you think a good costume would be to dress up like the boss’s wife? Trust me, it’s not.”
– Jack Handy
So far we have also seen, two Avatar people (the blue ones), one Lord Voldemort, and several Waldos (as “Where’s…”). Also a green plastic army guy, a BP oil spill, and the entire Monty Python crew.
And, speaking of clothes, the winner of our giveaway is…
Amanda who said her favorite thing about herself was: “my skin tone. I’m extremely white, but I’ve got enough on my mom’s olive hues to pull off pretty much any hair color. And changing up the hair is fun stuff.”
Congratulations Amanda! I’ll be contacting you to ship your prize to you!
“Your dresses should be tight enough to show you’re a woman and loose enough to show you’re a lady.”
– Edith Head
If the giveaway isn’t your cup of tea, here’s something else for you to shop with: Shabby Apple is offering a special deal to readers of their affiliates…and that means you!
They’ve added a couple of new frocks to their Yosemite line, I particularly love the Gray Fox and Red Fox dresses. And just a couple of weeks ago they debuted their newest line of Eastern inspired silk dresses, the Silk Road line, all of which just scream to be worn to those lurking holiday parties. The Ming dress especially would be stunning.
Desperately holding on to Summer? I love the Scarlett Dragon dress, or the fab jersey Giverny. Embracing the Fall? I’ve been coveting the sweet wool Yorkshire dress.
So…how’s does 10% off storewide and free shipping sound? Pretty fabulous, I expect! Just use the code fall10off and enjoy the best the season has to offer.
Don’t for get to enter the giveaway, winner announced tomorrow. Also tomorrow the office is dressing up in our Halloween costumes so we’ll be giving you the red carpet breakdown of those too. And I’ll be dyeing my hair red tonight so with my track record, I’ll probably get a good story out of that adventure too…you may prepare to laugh at my expense.
Chins up, pumpkins, it’s nearly Friday!
“Hi, this is [ahem] from the History department. We’ve just received a package that appears to contain a human skull. Could you send someone over, please?”
– [ahem] from History department
See above.
We sent over an officer half expecting to uncover a Halloween decoration with “Made in China” stamped merrily across it. Imagine our surprise then when he carted back a box containing two and half genuine human noggins! Look to be Native American remains, they’re trying to trace them now. Naturally the desecration of human bodies and disturbing of Indian remains is both illegal and (especially at this time of year) liable to open portals into the nether world, but sue me, I’m thrilled. I dashed back to the patrol room, slapped on a pair of plastic gloves, and got to handle them under the officer’s watchful eye. It’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in a couple of weeks! And if I drop dead in the near future, you can snuff it up to an ancient curse.
In less bizarre but equally exciting news, poodles, come back tomorrow for an exciting new giveaway!
Note: the prize will not include federally protected remains, items, artwork, etc. Apologies in advance for any disappointment.
“When in doubt, wear red.”
– Bill Blass
I’m getting a little ahead of myself, because I’m already plotting my Halloween costume. But as you may recall, I love Halloween! Each year our office dresses up. Witches and ghosts are occasionally seen, but we prefer to get a bit more creative. Sav dressed all in pink and a name tag that read “Floyd.” One of the student officers directs traffic in Mickey Mouse gloves.
And this year I’m going as Joan from Mad Men and it’s probably going to be the easiest costume I’ve ever had (although after that papier mache Anubis head, anything would be a piece of cake). Because that paragon of cuteness, Shabby Apple, has made in their new Yosemite line, the Joanest of all Joan Halloway dresses. However even the desire for a fab Halloween costume wasn’t going to induce me to spend $92 on it! Then, low and behold, Groupon did a deal and I got $100 of in store credit, for a much, much, MUCH lower price. My dress plus shipping was a third of what it would have been otherwise. This number is going to double as all go-to outfit for holiday parties this year.
And finally, I had to find that iconic pen necklace. I scoured Etsy and Ebay and Google, but everything that came up was so ludicrously priced as to laughable. Finally I found a long gold chain ($4) and a small gold pencil on a pendant ring ($6), and put it together myself. Et voila!
Now I’ll just have to get red hair dye. Should be fun! Or I can always chicken out and go as the new receptionist Megan, she of the French extraction and perfect skin.
I don’t read Janssen’s frugality blog for entertainment!
“It pays to plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
– Anon.
An awful thing happens to you post-graduation/marriage/21st birthday: You turn into an adult and you start planning. Which is understandable. It’s likely that your inner circle of friends and family has grown exponentially, you have more varied kinds of relationships (work, fun, etc.) and relationships take effort. Which is a long intro into me saying I’ve started eyeing things for Christmas shopping.
Also! Shabby Apple has given me the best Halloween costume idea ever! Apart from the gorgeous, summery Paris-inspired line that came out recently (which I’m still drooling over), and the Australian inspired swimwear line ( I want this one, but can’t justify because I already bought a swimsuit for this year)…they’ve also come out with a business wear type line. One of which is red, curvy, and the tiniest bit scandalous (here’s another view in black, just so you can see where the idea came to me from).
So who am I going to be?
Small Dog Syndrome 