Happy Halloween!!!!

My favorite holiday is here!!!! I love the spooky and macabre. I love pumpkins and candy. I love playing dress up and creating a character to be for the day. I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!!

So today's blog is all about things to get you in the Halloween spirit. I've kind of been lacking in Halloween spirit the last couple of years because I've just been so busy. Last year I did nothing, absolutely nothing, for Halloween because I was in the midst of IWBYJR revisions. I bought candy and hoped for trick-or-treaters (we never get any because we live in a townhouse on a really busy street), but that was about it.

I still haven't done as much as I would have liked to for Halloween (I wanted to throw a party, but I'm gonna do that next year when Halloween falls on a Saturday, the day I work at the Beacon, and then I can throw a Halloween party at the bar and have fun and make money at the same time, how perfect is that!), but I did a few things.

There is an amazingly cool cemetery near my house called Forest Home Cemetery, which I toured back on October 12th. It's a really old cemetery with a lot of history to it. Like it's the only place in Chicago where you can be buried no matter what you’ve done in life, hence Belle Gunness, famed female serial killer, lays in an unmarked grave there—or does she? It might actually be one of her victims! I wrote a column about the cemetery tour and my fascination with cemeteries for my local newspaper. Here's the link in case you want to read it to get in the Halloween spirit!

But honestly, I haven't been feeling the Halloween Spirit as much this year. I wasn't even really sure about making plans for today other than snuggling up on the couch and watching the Lost Boys 2 (I know it's going to be a travesty compared to the original, but I hope it is an amusing travesty). I've just been so busy lately that I'm exhausted so I wasn't sure I was in the mood for Halloween celebrations and I'm broke so no money for a good costume.... AH! NO! How lame is that! My favorite holiday and I'm not even going to bother to celebrate it for two years in a row???

Thank ghoul my friend Kathy prevented this. It turned out that she's going to a Halloween party/concert thing that I was invited to go to and suddenly knowing that I was going to get to see a friend I haven't seen much lately made it all worthwhile for me to get up off my lazy ass. I still had no idea what to do for a costume though and it was Monday and I had no time to shop or make something. Then I looked up more details on this concert/party thing and saw that Zombie costumes were encouraged!

I love Zombie movies and have never dressed up as a Zombie, so this was perfect! It's totally affordable because I just needed to grab some makeup from the Kmart down the block and peruse my closet for some clothing. I had a long white dress so I considered Zombie Bride. I had a prom dress (yes, in case you didn't know I collect dresses) so I considered Zombie Prom Queen. But guess what shares the closet with my dress collection? My old office job clothes! That's when inspiration really hit. Holding a 9 to 5 job where I worked in a cubicle totally made me feel like an office slave zombie, so that's my costume! I won't accidentally ruin clothes I actually like (ie my dresses) and instead I get the catharsis of ripping up those boring office clothes I loathed wearing every day. It's another way to bid fond farewell to my 2 years as office drone. So yay for zombies!

To get in the zombie spirit, I have been playing this fun choose-your-own-adventure movie game.

And now the moment you have been waiting for, my costume:
And zombie me trying to create a zombie kitten!
I'll have more pics tomorrow. But tell me/show me all about your Halloween!