Halloween Festivities

Yes, it is that time of year again when everyone dresses up and goes from house to house collecting candy and sweets. However, when you are a single adult in the city, it means Halloween Dances and Halloween themed movie parties...you know, of the Disney variety. So since Halloween in the middle of the week, of course all of the Halloween parties happen during the weekend before.

First Halloween activity, Stake Singles Dance. Costumes contests, donut eating contests, and goodies. Our group was a little late for the donut eating contest and such, but we definitely made it to the dance (which ends up always being lame because the music is terrible...well for the most part). The highlight would definitely have to be the fact that friends from the ward won the costume contest. A group of them dressed up as Ghostbusters. Special shout out to Libby who looked amazing as the secretary.

Here is some of the gang from 45 Wall before we headed up to Lincoln Square.

Brittany, Heidi, Ashley, Kyle (visitor who has stayed in 45 Wall)
me, Sara, Lyndee, and Brenda.

Hopefully I will have more pictures to share. I will say that I had a lot of people not recognize me at the dance. I also had a lot of random people on the street ask me where my sheep were, so I guess it was a good costume since people knew what I was supposed to be. There was one particular man in the subway who asked me where my sheep were and I responded that I didn't know and that I had been looking for them all night. He in turn replied with "That was a baaaaad joke." Gotta love NYC. That is another thing. When you dress up here, more random people see you since you have to take public transportation wherever you are going. This can be good or bad.

Second Halloween activity and also the best part about Halloween...the pumpkin carving! Now I know I alluded in my previous post what my awesome design for my "official" pumpkin for Halloween would be. Points to whomever got the reference. Anyway, so this last week I stopped at Whole Foods on my way home from work and bought the tallest, heaviest, most beautiful pumpkin I have ever purchased and had the pleasure to carve up. Well, yesterday I set aside time to carve my precious pumpkin. Let me tell you, this was the thickest pumpkin I have ever carved. I had a heck of a time just trying to get the lid off.

Check out that sucker!

Joining in on the carving festivities, Cory decided that she wanted to put her hand in the pumpkin. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds this part of carving enjoyable!

After all the digging and pulling out seeds and meat,
here is the inside of my pumpkin. Cleeeean!

Probably my least favorite part of the carving process,
that also happens to be the most important part, is transferring
the stencil to the pumpkin. All that poking makes my hand tired.
Here is what it looks like before the actual cutting begins.

I thought I might take a picture a little way into carving.
You can see how it starts to all come together.

After about 2 hours of works (this was estimated as I didn't
pay attention to the time) this is the finished work.

Ta dah! The finished work all lit up! Another
beautiful masterpiece (if I do say so myself).

So there you have it. Another successful carving. I would like to take this time to dedicate this pumpkin to my little niece Maeley who was my inspiration. Monsters Inc is one of her favorite movies and she reminds me of the little girl Boo, but a blonde haired version. Also yesterday was here 2nd birthday, so as soon as I finished carving I took pictures, put them on the computer and sent a copy home to show her. Oh how I wish I could have seen the look on her face!

Anyway, enjoy the the pictures and I will be sure to follow up with some additional pictures of the Little Bo Peep costume and of friends as well as of the pumpkin, that is once I get said pictures from friends and roommates. :)

p.s. Also stayed tuned for some pictures from the Mulcock Horror movie, in which I play a small role.