A Halloween message from beyond...

Y'all know I love Halloween, right?  Today I was rewarded by the Halloween spirits for my devotion. 

After taking photo-booth pictures for hours at work today....

I finally got sick of my clip on bangs, hipster hat and glasses.....



Here lies Taylor Swift

And my pounds of make-up (it aint easy to look like Taylor Swift)...

So, I decided to blot my lipstick off...and look what happened!!!!

How cool is that?????

The office is split on whether it is a bat or fangs (I think bat), but we all agree that it is really cool.

What do y'all think?  Cool or am I making too much out of it?

Also, my office was killing it today with the costumes.

Monster mashin it hard today y'all,

tbg

A Last Minute All Hallows Eve How-To

Happy Halloween!!!!  My favorite night is upon us.  We plan to spend the evening with our friends, A and L, handing out candy, watching scary movies and eating spooky treats. 

As the Halloween season is coming to a close, I thought I would go over a couple of quick DIYs in case you want to enhance your Halloween experience in easy and cheap ways.

First of all, I dress up like a witch every year to hand out candy.  I dress up the outside of my house to look like a witch may live there and then I answer the door in full character.  Some kids love it, some don’t.  Some parents love it, some don’t.  Last year, right before I opened the door, I heard little boy on the other side ask his mom, “Does a real witch live here?”  Love it.  The perfect mix of spooky and fun, as opposed to the year I forced my husband to answer the door with a hockey mask on, just one time…..based on the reaction of the kids, we will NOT be doing that again!  Let's just say there were tears...mostly from the kids.  Too much scary and not enough fun.  My bad.

Back to the task…..the witch’s hat is of course the best part of the witch costume.  I wanted to update my hat this year so I purchased this fancy one with a veil from Spirit Halloween for only $10!!!

 

Isn’t it fun for ten bucks?  The only problem is...it looks a little flat.  All the black makes it hard to see the detail. I have heard Nina Garcia say it a million times on Project Runway and let me tell you…she is right.

So, with the help of a few little ingredients...

 

I brewed up a new and improved witch’s hat.

 

For a grand total of less than $15 (already had the glue gun and glue sticks)

The next little tip is making bloody candles for your candle sticks.

Easiest thing on Earth.  I had four plain white candles bought cheap at Wal-Mart.  So I went back to Wal-Mart and bought a red candle for 46 cents.  Then all you do is hold a lighter to the red candle and let it drip onto the white.

 

It makes a quick, cheap and creepy effect for your Halloween display. I have them throughout my witch’s den among my ingredients for potions and the like...

Don't you love my hand in the mirror reflection? Amateur hour at its best.

 

 

I hope this has given you a little inspiration to “liven” up your all hallows eve….

Tonight's menu includes some of our favorite concoctions like Mini Mummies, Graveyard Dip, Bat Wings, Devil’s eggs and of course...Witches Brew.

How are you spending the evening?   

Have a spellbinding night,

tbg

All T Swift's Exes live in Texas....

Happy Monday my lovelies.  Did everyone get dressed up for spooky activities this weekend?  We sure did.  We went to a party at a friend’s house where costumes were a must!

As I talked about here, I prefer to create costumes out of the clothes I already own and by maybe purchasing one or two props rather than buying a costume ready made in a bag. 

The Fella came up with a couples theme for us this year and I was really impressed with his idea.  It was really fun.

 

We were Taylor Swift and all of her exes.

 

 

We got rained on a little but it was a great night!

Last year we were Joan Harris and Don Draper of Mad Men.

 

Fun times.

This year my niece and her boyfriend went with us and they were the Queen of Hearts and a Card.  And her precious little dog Lua was a shark.

 

My favorite costumes of the night were worn by two of my girlfriends and their husbands.  They were the Golden Girls. 

 

Fantastic right???

I have to take a minute to talk about a part of my costume.....the T Swift Bangs....

This one is blurry, but it shows the bangs well.

 

These are clip-ons!  Don't they look so real?  They are from ULTA and they were fantastic!  I will wear them again, I think.

Ok, I have to take one more minute to show y'all my adorable 7 month old neice.  My sister-in-law made her costume....

 

I am not biased or anything but is she not the most adorable child you have ever seen!?  Snow White has nothing on this baby.  Like I said, not biased.

On Sunday, we laid around, watched football and carved our pumpkins....

 

Did you go to any parties?  Have a fun costume?  See any great costumes?

Have a great and spooky week!

tbg

 

Haunted Tour: New Orleans

Ok so I know I explained my obsession with Halloween here.  But when I saw that Helene and Sarah are hosting a Halloween link-up, I had to revisit the subject.  So I turned on my spooky fall playlist in my headphones and got to writing.

The point of this link-up to discuss anything Halloween.  I mentioned in my previous post that I had my bachelorette party in New Orleans on Halloween a few years ago.  It was actually more like a bridesmaids get-away that also included my mother and aunt.

My wonderful bridesmaids flew in from all over for two nights and three days of spooky, drunken fun in NOLA.

NOLA is my favorite place to visit for many reason such as my father’s family is from there, the music, the food and the history.  The haunted history epically fascinates me so on Halloween evening we got dressed up in our best vampire duds and took a haunted history tour. 

 

It was easily one of the most fun things I have ever done.  Unfortunately because the tour stopped every so often at a bar where we were able to partake in drink deals, we didn’t make it all the way to end of the tour.  13 women drinking a lot make for a pretty rowdy tour group.  Long story short…we got kicked out of the tour. 

This was our tour guide and she did not especially love us by the end of the evening.

 

New Orleans is considered to be the most haunted city in America.  Some of the more famous ghost stories about New Orleans take place in the French Quarter where many of the buildings are said to be haunted.  Today I will play your tour guide to some the most haunted houses in the French Quarter.

Starting with the story of the Haunting of the Octoroon Mistress, 734 Royal Street.

The history of the Ocotoroons is fascinating and heartbreaking to begin with, but the story of the Octoroon Mistress really resonates with tourists due to its' "romantic" origins. Here is a little background from Wikipedia...

“The term Octoroon is used for people in New Orleans in the 1800s that were 1/8 black, 7/8 white. These octoroons were known as freed blacks. They received the best education and were often very wealthy. Masked balls were used as a way for rich Creoles to obtain an octoroon mistress. Because of their different social statuses, octoroons and Creole men were not allowed to marry. This became an issue because these women often fell deeply in love.  The house at 734 Royal Street is haunted by the ghost of a beautiful octoroon named Julie. Well, Julie was head-over-heels in love with the man who “kept” her as a mistress, and she wanted nothing more than to get married. One cold December night during a ball, he decided to make a sort of dare. He told Julie that if she could prove her love for him by standing naked on the roof of the house all night until dawn, he would then marry her. He did not believe that she would accept this challenge. He went back downstairs to enjoy the ball. The next morning the he went to Julie's room to check on her. He was surprised to find her room empty. He immediately rushed upstairs to the roof. When he looked outside he saw his mistress huddled near the eave of the roof, frozen to death. The octoroon mistress is said to haunt the house she once resided in. Some people say on a cold and damp night you can see her figure pacing on the rooftop waiting for her lover to return."

Here is one of the pictures I took on the tour. 

 

Notice the glowing entity on the far right roof?  It appears in all of my pictures I took of this house on that night  Spooky eh?

Next stop....

The LaLaurie House, 1140 Royal Street. 

 

If you have been watching this season of American Horror Story then you will be somewhat familiar with perhaps the most gruesome and famous of French Quarter ghost stories.

Built in 1831, the three-story home belonged to Dr. Louis LaLaurie and his wife Delphine.  Delphine was a very popular New Orleans resident.  She would often throw fantastic balls at their beautiful home.  She was highly esteemed in society for her charitable work among the sick and the poor. She was said to be the most beautiful and influential French-Creole woman in New Orleans.  She and her daughters were among the most fashionable women in the city.

This was a time in American history were it was common to own slaves and Madame LaLaurie was not an exception.  She had dozens tending to her home and her family.  To make matters worse, she treated them cruelly.  Although slavery is cruel in and of itself, there was actually a law in New Orleans at the time that forbade slave holders to treat their slaves cruelly.  Of course it now seems absurd to think that there was a way to own slaves in a non-cruel fashion, however, Madame L treated hers in such a way that despite her good reputation, people began to complain to authorities about just how cruel she seemed to treat her slaves.  She was soon fined and her slaves were taken away to be sold at auction.  She then persuaded friends to buy her slaves and then sell them back to her.

In 1834, when a fire broke out in the Lalaurie residence, firemen smashed open a locked interior door and came upon a scene surpassing horror.  They basically stumbled upon a torture chamber.  I won’t go into all of the horrible details.  Just Google the story if you want to know the extent of her madness. She disappeared and nobody knows for sure what happened to her.  The house has had trouble retaining an owner since these horrible events.  Nobody has owned the house for more than 5 years.  There have been hundreds of accounts of terrifying noises and sightings at the house.  Nicolas Cage owned the home for a while but lost it when he went bankrupt.

 

You could not pay me to party up there.  I got a seriously eerie feeling standing outside this house.  I worked up the nerve to run over and touch its’ walls the night of the tour but since then refuse to walk past it on the same side of the street, even in the daylight.

I will leave you with a little more light-hearted story.  My favorite bar in New Orleans is Jean Laffite’s Blacksmith Shop, 934 Bourbon Street.

 

The building is one of the oldest in New Orleans and one of the only left with the traditional French architecture due to multiple fires in the Quarter.  The Pirate Jean Laffite is said to still haunt this bar. Here is a little background on the building, the haunting and the pirate himself.  This building is beyond cool.  Not only is it a great bar, it is the longest running bar in America.  If you go you MUST have a VooDoo Daiquiri for me.  They taste like kool-aid but lordy they pack a punch.

I personally have never felt any strange auras while in the Blacksmith Shop but a good friend of mine who writes over at The Peacock Pad recently took this picture.

How cool is that?

If you ever get the chance to go to NOLA on Halloween don’t hesitate.  It was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had.  The people hold nothing back as far as costumes...

Decor...

And atmosphere....

 

Have a great time but stay in a group...you never know what may be lurking around the corner.

 

The Baby Giraffe