When I was a little girl I was a big fan of The Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy. Anyone else read those? They were about a young girl called Mildred Hubble, who went to a school for witches (which was totally a thing, even before Hogwarts) where she was, well, the worst. All of Mildred’s spells went wrong. She couldn’t fly her broomstick without falling off or crashing into something. Her bootlaces were always undone, and her hair was always messy. When the time came for the young witches to be given animal companions, all of the other witches got sleek black cats, while Mildred was left with a scruffy little tabby which couldn’t stay on her broom.
I totally identified with these books. My spells never really worked either, you see. And while I was good at my lessons, I was bad at EVERYTHING else. I was always wearing the wrong clothes, listening to the wrong music, saying the wrong thing. None of the other witches girls in my class liked me, either. Mildred and I would have been BFFs, for sure.
None of this has anything to do with my costume for Saturday night’s party, though. I wasn’t The Worst Witch as a tribute to Mildred Hubble: I was just the worst witch in that I bought a hat, slapped on some eye makeup, and called it a “costume”. Happy Half-Assed Halloween, everyone!
In my defence, I had actually planned a completely different costume for this party. I just needed to buy one thing, which I found on eBay… and then got totally outbid on. And I couldn’t find a replacement in time, so this was my “oh, crap, I don’t have a costume now: I’ll just go as a wich!” effort. Still, at least I have great idea for next year!
In preparation for my transformation into a witch, I went to the supermarket last weekend to buy a broomstick. And, you know, at this time of year, the supermarkets ALWAYS have lots of witch-related fancy-dress stuff, so I thought there was no chance of me not being able to find one. Of course, I was wrong: not a broom was to be found, so instead I bought this crappy black rose:
It really has nothing to do with anything: it just looked a bit creepy. I already had the wand, though. Doesn’t everyone have a wand tucked away for these occasions?
 “I put a spell on shoe…”
Even witches like to pose. Shut up, they totally do.
I’m, like, SOSCARY, no?
What do you mean, “no”? Here’s what happened to the last person who crossed me:
 Yes, Terry’s slack-jawed yokel of last week met with an unfortunate accident. That’s the last time he’ll try to stop ME buying shoes.
It’s OK, though, he still loves me:
See?
I’ll get you, my pretties.
 Yes, and your little dog, too.
 Thanks to Steven and Lindsay for another great party: can’t wait for next year!
Tagged halloween
Folks, I’d like to introduce you to the new man in my life:
It’s Terry, the slack jawed yokel!
Handsome brute, isn’t he?
Don’t you just LOVE his hat?
Weird thing, though… when I was editing these photos, I noticed something strange reflected in Terry’s glasses. Something… spooky…
I’m scared. Hold me.
(P.S. As you might have noticed, I changed the layout again. I did this myself, and haven’t quite finished tweaking it yet, so apologies for anything that doesn’t work properly – I will get round to it!)
Tagged halloween, Terry
A few years ago, a group of students discovered a blog in a creepy old cabin in the woods.
Of course, they read it.
They couldn’t really make head nor tail of it, though. It was just a crazy, incoherent jumble of words and images: a dress here, a pair of shoes there, a random act of stupidity here, there and everywhere… So they shrugged, and went off to do something else.
A few minutes after they finished reading, however, the phone rang.
“One week,” said a mysterious voice on the other end.
And sure enough, one week later…
…
Absolutely nothing happened.
Because blogs don’t have that kind of power, stupid, only horror movies have that kind of power. Have I taught you nothing here?
So, for Halloween Part 1 I decided to pay homage to The Scariest Movie I Have Ever Seen, a.k.a. The Ring. Well, it was either Sadako/Samara from The Ring, or it was That Old Woman from Insidious . If I’d chosen to go as T.O.W., though, I would have actually have had to LOOK at That Old Woman again, in order to get inspiration for the costume, and… I’m not ever looking at That Old Woman again, and you can’t make me. Also, to be Samara, all I needed was a black wig (eBay) and a white nightgown (my mum), et voila!
The Ring (and yes, I’ve seen the Japanese version, before you all start) was the first film to seriously freak me out. After watching it, I didn’t sleep properly for approximately three years, because every time I closed my eyes, I would imagine Samara standing at the bottom of the bed, and I would want to die. The movie was also responsible for making me frightened of a) televisions and b) phones. (OK, I’d ALWAYS been a bit frightened of phones, but The Ring took it to new levels.) Even now, I only have to THINK about certain sequences from that movie, and I will freak the hell out.
So, what do you do when there’s a character from a movie who seriously scares you, folks? Why, you dress as her for Halloween, of course! And then you spend the entire evening avoiding mirrors, because every time you catch sight of yourself, you almost die of fear. Awesome!
Anyway, raging fear aside, the party was lots of fun (thanks to Nicky and Barry for being our hosts once again!) and everyone looked fantastic. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “We don’t really care about your crappy outfit, Amber, we just want to see Terry’s costume!” Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while longer. You see, we have another Halloween party to attend this Saturday, and while I’m wearing something different this time (you can only get me into a shapeless white nightgown once), Terry will be wearing the same costume he wore this week. I know the hosts of the next party read this blog from time to time (Hi Steven and Lindsay!) and I don’t want to spoil the, er, impact of Terry’s outfit for them, so I’ll post his photos on Saturday, before we go. I’m sure you’ll all be on the edge of your seats.
To make up for that crushing blow, however, here is Rubin’s “costume”:
And you can deny it all you like, but if the phone rings shortly after you finish reading this, you’re going to be scared.
And you should be.
ONE. WEEK.
Tagged halloween, scary movies
I know it’s not actually Halloween until tomorrow, but my mum just emailed me this photo of Rubin (he stayed with my parents’ last night while we were out partying: we’re heading off to pick him up soon!), and it was too good not to share:
Hope everyone’s having a great weekend!
p.s. One more…
OMGSCARY!
(Note: Rubin wore this mask for approximately 2 seconds each time. No bichons were harmed in the making of these photos.)
Tagged halloween, rubin
All ready for Halloween Part 2.
Oh, who am I kidding: you all just want to see Terry, don’t you?
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Tagged green mad men dress, halloween, joan holloway, Terry, The Box
Well, folks, it’s that time of year again: that precious, precious time when I get to dress up as much as I want, and no one can tell me I’m “overdressed”, because it’s Halloween – yay! And this year, as with last year, we have two costume parties to attend: one on the Saturday just gone, and one next Saturday, which means you have another one of these posts to look, er, forward to next week. I know, sorry.
Anyway! Although I love to use Halloween as an excuse to get completely and utterly overdressed, I also have to work around the fact that I’m completely and utterly lazy. With these two points in mind, I had actually decided fairly early on that I would dress up as Marilyn Monroe for our first party: not just because I hear blondes have more fun, but because I thought it would be relatively easy. “Why, all I’ll need will be a white dress and a blonde wig,” I thought, “And I bet I won’t even need to search for the white dress, because if I mention it enough times, my mum will probably find one for me!”
And she did. Thanks, mum!
With the white dress in the bag, then (literally: my mum altered it for me and then put it in a bag) I pretty much sat back and did absolutely nothing to prepare for my transformation into the world’s most famous blonde. I knew from my search for an appropriate Lady Gaga wig last year that eBay is just full of Marilyn Monroe wigs, and they’re even labelled “Marilyn Monroe wig”, just to make it even easier for lazy-asses like me. So confident was I that nothing could possibly go wrong with this, then, that I waited until just a week before the party before I hopped onto eBay and bought the first cheapest wig I could find. Then I sat back and resumed doing nothing, until the wig arrived and I realised it looked more like a blonde version of Little Orphan Annie’s hair than Marilyn Monroe’s. Whoops.
As for Terry:
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Tagged halloween, rubin, Terry
Because I know that, deep down, you care:
It’s still there. And as you may have noticed, there are four of us living in it now:
This is actually the first time Terry and I have bothered to buy a pumpkin. We’re not really down with the whole “getting involved in seasonal holidays” thing. We’re just too lazy. This year, however, Terry ordered a pumpkin, and, much to my excitement, it’s no ordinary pumpkin, either:
It’s an OMG MUTANT PUMPKIN! From OUTER SPACE! I mean, I know it’s been a while since I did a supermarket shop, but I had NO IDEA they were getting their produce from so far afield these days. Modern life, eh? It really is amazing.
In other news (which is actually not news at all to those of you who follow me on Twitter), last night Terry tried on his Halloween costume for this weekend, and Rubin was so frightened by it that he actually ran away in terror, although don’t tell him I told you that, obviously. I kid you not. He came running to me and scrambled up on to my knee, from where he sat and stared at Terry in deep suspicion, turning to look up at me every so often as if to say, “Are you seeing this?!” Afterwards, he tried to say he’d just been “trying to protect me”, and he actually got a bit pissy about it when I tried to suggest he’d been frightened, but let’s just say no one would really blame him if he had been. And, once again, I can only apologise in advance to the friends we’ll be seeing on Saturday night while Terry’s dressed like that. I’m so sorry, guys.
In other other news, meanwhile, I’ve discovered that it’s actually impossible for me to take photos of Rubin without at least one of them turning out like this:
I’m talking about the tongue-on-nose, thing, by the way, not the mutant hand, because that’s actually mine. There’s only one mutant in this house right now, and it’s not Rubin.
(It’s Terry.)
(I’m kidding.)
(No, it’s Terry.)
Tagged halloween, The Box
Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this unfortunate series of Catastrophic Events to bring you photos of the Halloween costume I was banging on about on Black Friday, shortly before the phone call from Heart Internet saying, “Oh, hai, we just deleted your business. Good luck sorting THAT out!”
So, as I mentioned, we’d been invited to a Halloween party on Saturday night, and despite the fact that we’d only had a few hours of restless, tortured sleep on Friday (I don’t know what Terry dreamt about, but I dreamt about… buying foundation. Huh.), we decided we’d still go. By Saturday evening we’d managed to get all of Terry’s clients’ websites back online, and were convinced we had copies of the missing content from ours, so even although we knew we still had many, many hours of work ahead of us, we thought it might be a good idea to have a break from all of the MEGA! STRESS! and spend some time with people who WOULDN’T scare the living daylights out of us both. Although, if someone had turned up dressed as a Heart Internet server or employee, that might have done the trick.
Just a few short hours after the Catastrophic Event, then, we found ourselves heading out dressed as…
Lady Gaga and the Terminator!
Now, this lady gaga halloween costume didn’t work out quite the way I’d intended it to. The plan had been for me to go shopping on Saturday afternoon to pick up the extra bits and pieces I’d need for a full-on Lady Gaga look, but, of course, after Black Friday my heart wasn’t really in it, so it all ended up being a bit last minute.
Still, we had a fun night, and it was great to be able to just relax and not think about everything that was going on with the websites. And I really liked my false eyelashes, although not enough to want to advertise them for free on eBay, so please don’t take that as an invitation to steal my photos:
Terry doesn’t want to model cybernetic eyes, either…
Tagged halloween, heart internet, lady gaga, terminator
 Breakfast at Tiffany's What I wore for Halloween last year (Holly Golightly, in case you’re wondering). I’m planning something just a little different for the party we’re going to tomorrow night, but… you’ll have to wait until Sunday/Monday to see what it is. If I can actually bring myself to post photos, that is. If I can’t, we’ll just pretend this post doesn’t exist and say no more about it, hmm? What Halloween costume? No, I didn’t mention a Halloween costume, you must have me confused with someone else.
What about you, though? Are you dressing up for Halloween? What are you going to be? Tell me: I’m nosey!
Tagged fancy dress, halloween
Now, I know Halloween was on Friday, but all the cool kids arrive fashionably late, and so it was that Terry and I found ourselves out celebrating the event last night instead. As usual, I kept it low key and casual:
(Note: Holly Golightly, in case you were wondering. The “costume” for girls who just really, really like to get glammed up, but never get the chance. And who was secretly convinced that her friends had been lying to her and that it wasn’t actually a costume party at all, so that she would be forced to walk around all night dressed like Sponge Bob or something while they were all in jeans. This fear was laid to rest when we went to pick up our friends Ewen and Gillian en route to the party, and the Tin Man answered their door…)
Terry, meanwhile, was the usual embarrassment:
Yes, he went there. Oh yes he did.
There’s more! But they are under the jump, so if you don’t want to see them you don’t have to…
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Tagged fancy dress, halloween
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