Halloween Fun??

Another odds and ends post? It seems like that's all I ever do now. I'm considering doing another 30 day blog challenge, to force myself to blog but then I think why set yourself up for failure.

I am currently on my reading week from school, and that is all I'm doing. I feel like I'm drowning in readings.

I have actually had a portion of this post saved in my drafts since Friday with every intention of finishing it and posting it by latest Saturday. As you can see that did not happen. I have a bunch of that I have posts planned for: Some wedding stuff, some weekend stuff, some school stuff. But with Halloween rapidly approaching, I figured I would do a post on that.

I consider myself the scrooge of Halloween. I hate it. Passionately. I would be perfectly happy to simply skip Halloween all together and go straight to Christmas, a much more adequate holiday if you ask me. Now don't get me wrong, I think Halloween is great for kids (although its becoming less and less fun yearly as psycho's poison candy and stick razor blades in chocolate, but that is an entirely different post for a different day). I love going to watch the girls dress up and trick or treat, but honestly, I think that has to come to an end at the age of about 12. Then you become a candy giver, not a candy taker. Dressing up at 25 for a Halloween party is not my idea of fun.

Unfortunately I have a group of friends and a wonderful fiance who disagree with me. Therefore, Halloween becomes a bit of a war every year. A party is planned where costumes are required. I play my scrooge act and flat out refuse to dress up (I mean, the prices of costumes are ridiculous! I refuse to pay $60-70 for one night. And for those of you who want to take the "make your own" approach.....tried it....it's not that much cheaper!) I also get ganged up on every year and forced, unwillingly and very unhappily, into some overly priced outfit that I never wanted. Want some examples? Here ya go.....

2005 - Doctor and a nurse

2006 I found pictures of us not dressed up! Did I actually win that year???? If so, HOW?!?!

2007 - Little Red Riding Hood

2008 - A GoGo girl

2009 - I refused to go get a costume this year. So instead I spent costume money on these super cute boots and went as a cowgirl. I love these boots. Best costume ever.

So what is the point of this post? Other than a reason to pull out vintage pictures of myself and make me feel crappy about the weight I've gained?

2010 - In august we got invited to a pub for a Halloween/my brother in laws birthday party. We agreed to go (I mean he is my brother in law) and I'm thinking score, no dressing up. Boy was I wrong. Costumes are, of course, mandatory. So here we go again. I'm currently in the I'm not dressing up. I'm wearing jeans, my York sweater and Uggs and going as a university student. C is currently in the process of wearing me down little by little. I will keep you updated. My dreams of winning are not optimistic.

Oh and just as an aside. I hope all of my Canadian followers had an awesome Thanksgiving. I'm still full from all the food, but had a wonderful weekend visiting with all of my family.

I have some catching up to do....

Wow!!

I can't believe that the last time I blogged was before Halloween! Time really gets away from you. So I guess I can start there, seeing as I showed you my adorable boots, but you never got the end result.

So here we are! "C" decided to go as a dirty old man, and I was a cow girl (Note the adorable boots!). The party was fun and crazy as usual, but I have to admit, as much fun as these parties are, my favourite part of the whole thing is the day after. "C" and I typically stay the night at my best friends house so that no one needs to be concerned with driving, and the morning after routine has pretty much been set in stone after all these years. We get up with just enough time to hit McDonalds for their breakfast (I guess you can consider this my "hangover" food) and then the rest of the day is spend relaxing in bed. Its nice to have nothing to do and just lay in bed all day and sleep, so this is really what I've come to look forward to when there are parties.

Other than this I need to be honest and admit that not much has happened. School has gotten crazy, and I am procrastinating BIG time. This year seems to be particularly worse than normal. It's my third year, and I can definitely see the light at the LONG tunnel that has been my education, but I just can't seem to find the motivation to put the work in that I normally do. I can't explain it, this year is no different from others, I like (most) of my classes, I just can't seem to force myself to do the work that is needed. Hopefully I'll snap out of it.

In movie news: I can't even remember what movies I have seen since I last posted. Couples Retreat comes to mind, and I'm probably going to be a major disappointment right now because I REALLY didn't like it. I found that most of the funny parts were in the commercials, and the rest of it I found depressing. Maybe this is because it is coming from a person who is getting married, and therefore watching four couples who pretty much hate each other and their lives together for two hours just isn't funny to me. Or maybe the movie just sucks, I dunno...you decide!
We also saw Law Abiding Citizen. This is a good movie, and I'm not only saying this because I think Gerrard Butler is drop dead gorgeous :). I found the concept to be something entirely different, not falling into the same old plot lines that we are all bored with, while at the same time not going to far and becoming unrealistic. Gerrard Butler did a fantastic job, he played his character perfectly, leaving you wondering for the better part of the film if he was insanely smart or just completely psycho. I one hundred percent recommend this one!

This post is bordering too long again, I have a real problem with that. BUT just to finish up, I have a book I want to talk about. We had to read a book called "The Raw Shark Texts" by Steven Hall for school, and I'm going to admit it is exactly the kind of book that I would never look twice at if wandering in a book store for myself. I was surprised when it actually caught my attention, so much so that I had trouble putting it down. I'm not going to give anything away, but will warn that it is different, probably unlike anything most people have ever read. It revolves around a kind of psychological shark that feeds on memories and knowledge, to the point where the recipient forgets everything and is forced to begin life and relearn everything all over again. Like I said...different. It is difficult to get into originally, but in the end it is worth it!

I'm also attempting to read Jane Austen's "Emma" for my Film and Lit class, and I am having trouble. I read fairly quickly, as long as the book interests me, and I have been working through this one for a good two weeks now and I'm not even 100 pages in. I had this problem with Pride and Prejudice when I attempted to read that about a year ago. I guess Austen is simply not my forte

Has anyone else had a problem with her novels??

I'm a Problem Solver!

I have labeled myself the Halloween Scrooge. I have never been a particular fan of this holiday, even as a kid, dressing up wasn't my favourite thing to do. I would always pick the prettiest princess dress or fairy costume (no I never went as something scary, I was almost always a princess) and the excitement would begin. Then it would become apparent that I live in Canada, and Halloween is in October. Cue my mother forcing my beautiful princess dress, over a snow suit. Not exactly the vision on Cinderella that I had in mind when the costume was bought. So anyways, Halloween, not exactly my cup of tea, but this year I have been particularly bad.

My best friend always has a Halloween party, which typically ends up getting pretty crazy, and costumes are always mandatory. Years before this I would complain slightly to the fiancee, but in the end relent, buy the costume and pretend to be happy about it. This year I took a different route. I tried everything from refusing to dress up (I'm going as nothing, I told them), to putting off costume hunting to the last possible minute, to being absolutely miserable. Can you believe nothing worked?!? They didn't give in and insisted I dress up, even if it meant I would be impossible to live with. So Tuesday fiance decides we're going costume hunting (cue enthusiastic YAY!). So after being at school all day, he picks me up and the hunting commences. I'm going to be honest, I did not go out of my way to make this fun. I whined (a lot), I complained about the ridiculous prices and insisted that I refused to pay them, I got mad at the store for having a fog machine (why am I walking through fog? I can't see the costumes? How can I spend $60.00 on a costume when I can't see them?), and refused a few more times stating that I wasn't buying a costume period. So needless to say, after three stores, fiance was getting annoyed.

This is when my idea came to me!

My biggest issue with this whole costume thing was the fact that I was being forced to spend money (at least $60.00) on something I really didn't want, need and would probably only end up wearing once. Then I found these:

These are cute, practical, and could obviously be worn again, and they were only $50.00! Problem solved! Take my costume money and buy these very cute boots, and go as a cowgirl :). It's simple...... jean skirt, tank top, some kind of dress shirt tied at the waste and new very cute boots....done! Now everyone's happy, I'm dressing up and not being entirely miserable about it making fiance and friends happy. I got new boots and didn't have to buy some stupid uncomfortable costume, me happy.

I'm a genius!

Busy, Busy

The Fiance and I have had a busy weekend. But before I get to that, I realized that I never actually posted my official engagement story. I'm still not going to do that because Shaba, over at A Blog of her Own, did it for me! So thank you to her for including our story in her proposal project!

Now back to my weekend, starting with Friday, I officially got to go bridesmaid dress shopping! No, no not for me. I am a bridesmaid in a friend's upcoming May wedding (I'll call her V). But even though we were not dress shopping for MY wedding, it did give me the wedding gratification that I was craving in my previous post. I got to try on several pretty dresses, and of course I spend a good part of the day eying wedding dresses while the current bride was distracted. But no worries fellow bloggers, I stuck to my guns and did not try a single dress on. I'm being strong. All in all, I feel much better about my own wedding and am now busy throwing myself into my upcoming bridesmaid duties. Stay tuned for updates.

Saturday: A group of friends and I went to Halloween Haunt. For those of you that don't live around me, this is a kind of giant Haunted Carnival, that our amusement park (Wonderland) throws every year. The open the park only at night, and have several haunted houses set up all throughout it, as well as costumed characters walking freely on the grounds. This (like scary movies) is not really my thing. But (again) the fiance absolutely LOVES it. Despite my fear of things, we did have a good time. It was freezing, but we toughed it out, and the rides throughout the park are all still running, so there is something for everyone. Definitely worth checking out if you live in the area!

And today was our engagement photos! This is deserving of it's own post (partly because I want it to have its own post and partly because this blog is long enough) but here is a sneak preview of some of our favourites:


These are only a few that were sent to us by another photographer. Let me know what you think! More to Come later!!

What did everyone else do with their weekend??