For someone who really hates Halloween, I sure had a good time this year. Since the actual holiday was on Sunday—I just shuddered a little bit when I referred to it as a holiday—everyone made it into a weekend long affair. There were people dressed up at the grocery store on Friday. I mean, honestly. Who dresses up to go to Safeway?
Friday night we carved pumpkins at Tom and JZ’s. I’m not a big fan of carving pumpkins, because I just don’t really enjoy getting disgusting orange goop all over myself. But I took charge of roasting the pumpkin seeds (after the boys tried to fry them in a pan… fail), and had a grand ol’ time watching Nat and LDC prepare their watermelon and pumpkin helmets for the football game they were attending on Sunday. Natalie’s had holes for her pigtails.
By this time, I still hadn’t really settled on a costume idea. I knew I was in trouble because I was going to a party the next night with a whole bunch of extremely gung-ho happy halloween people. Luckily my friend Maddie shared her idea of taping a whole bunch of purple balloons to herself and going as grapes. Since LDC and Natalie were going as a couples costume I suggested Maddie and I do the same thing and I could go as her green grapes partner in crime. Perfect!
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Saturday Natalie and I spent the day shopping for costumes. She needed white and blue hairspray, I needed to find a whole bunch of balloons. My costume did not end up being as easy to put together as I’d hoped. I decided to go with dental floss to tie everything together, but it kept getting tangled. And when I’d put the balloon costume on it kept falling off or all the balloons would congregate in the front, leaving my rear exposed to the elements. Once Maddie and I had finally managed to tie all the balloons together and get them to fall in all the right places, we had to figure out how to get them in the car to transport them to the party. My grapes ended up in the trunk, as I was the driver and being surrounded by a whole bunch of balloons while driving is inadvisable. Maddie tried to lay her grapes across Nat, Tom and Luke in the backseat, very carefully. Of course as soon as we arrived everything was all tangled again.
So. The Party. India Spooktacular was a huge shindig at the BB homestead. It was for sure one of the biggest, most intense house parties I’ve ever been to, and probably one of the most fun too. Westside is sending a team of 16 people to India over Christmas to run a vacation bible school for the kids at the Shanti Niketan children’s home. The Halloween party was a fundraiser for this trip, so everyone made a donation to get in the door. In the end, the team raised over $2500 for India!
There was a big dance floor, a mingling/food room, a pumpkin carving room, and a huge room in the basement where people left their coats and purses and stuff (the makeout room…hey oh!). My friend Jess had my most favorite costume of all. She dressed up as cookie monster and wore this huge furry suit the whole night. She must have been so hot because she didn’t take it off once. But it was hilarious. You have not lived until you’ve danced to Like a G6 with Cookie Monster.
The grape costume was also really good for creating personal space on the dancefloor.
And I only had one run in with a creepy guy trying to grab all of them! Sadly I had to leave the party pretty early because I was on worship the next morning. We spent the actual day of Halloween with
By the time Sunday was over I was exhausted. And I can’t believe that I actually spent an entire weekend celebrating a holiday I don’t even like that much. But it was fun, and I would highly recommend the grapes costume for anyone. I felt cute and it didn’t take too much effort on my part. Plus the bright green leggings were totally comfy.