Another successful party! 43 attended including 2 babes in arms, a new Halloween record! Mostly a Choral Project crowd again, but it was back to the Jeff J. winning streak for Most Creative Costume since he came as iSilhouette, also known as jPod/iTunes man/iPod man…basically the silhouettes with white earbuds & iPods you see in all the ads, including his face painted black! Hilarious! Everyone said they had a fabulous time “as usual” even one said “a BLAST” so I think everyone really did enjoy it. Nothing ever turns out perfectly of course, which just gives me something to strive for next time around…like my disaster of a bedroom that includes my carryon luggage still unpacked from the LA trip this week! Ah well…at least the downstairs looked fine… 
As Melanie was helping me with my makeup still, which required me having no shirt on (!) Ben showed up a little early but was restricted to downstairs only, where he stayed getting his munchies ready, and I heard Kylie the Kitty roaming around downstairs even! She lasted through Keith arriving just a little early to help take photos, so Kylie even got a quick party photo in her easy costume! Of course since Bud the dog, in “Yo-Dog” costume, was there all evening, Kylie meowed loudly a lot, but never ventured downstairs until well after Bud left.
My Corpse Bride outfit worked out very well – hooray! Melanie helped put light blue makeup on my back & arms where I couldn’t reach properly, but I did my face & all my shading, then we sprayed the fixer spray I had been recommended to use. We must have been too close in a couple spots with the spray, since it made my makeup run in a couple places, but I don’t seem to have rubbed off on anyone, which was great. My bony arm especially photographed very well, impressing many – always nice to get a good reaction! We had a huge photo shoot out in the graveyard with the fog, including trying to do traditional bride poses just to show off my dress & even my veil, since I had worked so hard on the whole outfit. Since my bodice was so low with me so near to revealing myself, I got made fun of plenty. Hey, when you’ve got it, flaunt it, right? The only real issue was that people kept stepping on my dress, which was to be expected with a train, and wasn’t a problem for appearance, since a few more tatters & shreds were completely appropriate, but it yanked the hooks off my skirt that was attached to the corset, so a couple times people had to point out to me I was showing off a lot more hip & thigh than I ever intended! Good thing I had both the blue tights & my handpainted bone tights on underneath!
I had made no new gravestones for this year, but the arrangement was different, since I spread out everything to use the entire side yard, since my garden had been more spread out already, so I used the butternut squash, tomatoes & corn as accent foliage. It was interesting that I had some comments that there were more gravestones this year, even though they were only the same number. Since last year the fog right by the patio made it difficult for costume gallery photos, I switched the “constant fogger” to the gate and I moved the other fog machine at the other end of the graveyard farther down the side yard, covering it with the stone coffin, which worked nicely. Both fog machines worked fine all evening, even with running dangerously low a couple times as I ran out to refill, since thankfully the strong breezes that were making me nervous earlier in the day had calmed down by the evening. It was still quite chilly, cool enough for no food spoilage worries at all since the main food tables were outside. The witches brew was also outside, and there was hot cider on my BBQ which also gave out some heat for ambient warmth until the coals cooled off. Since there were still less than 50 of us, it was easy enough for people to roam inside & out as they pleased.
People loved the glow sticks as stirrers and they had lots of clever fun at the mad scientist drink station – hooray! 
We voted on Most Laudable Laboratory Libation, with Tracia as the winner with a “Volcano on the Rocks” using Pop Rocks in a layered drink. Last year I finally ran out of the same box of cheap thin plastic sandwich bags I had always used for the bleeding heart, so I bought the thinnest, non-zip bags I could, which seemed to feel thin enough, but I suspect they have improved the plastic technology, since I had difficulty with not only getting the heart to bleed, but also the new bleeding hands – argh! I wasn’t ever able to get a good dripping flow going, but I should have great video footage of me using the huge butcher knife hacking away very violently at both sets of organs! bwahahaha!
My mom reported a webcam issue around 6:30pm that the inside webcam wasn’t working, but when I checked at around 7pm it was ok. We even had word from a friend living in Italy that she had pulled up the webcam around 7:45am her time, asking my friend to get herself in front of the webcam so she could see her! haha…I took down the broadcast & checked for image captures at 3:25am (2:25am falling back for Daylight Savings Time actually), which were still going, so the webcams seemed to have been successful again, thank goodness! As of the night of the party I had already seen both Keith’s & Tracia’s photos, since they so kindly remembered their cables so we could load them into my computer, with instant gratification of the three of us seeing all about 350 photos from the same night! AND other people were also taking photos! I am so thankful to Keith, since even though I can reset decorations to photograph them the next day, the food is never able to be reproduced exactly the same, so I often miss good chances at photos, especially of the food, when getting other food ready or busy with costume photos of my guests! 
Scariest Costume = Official tie between the Fighting Bridesmaids (Cyd & Robin) and Ben the Wolf with 6 votes each = Ben got the prize
Most Creative Costume = Jeff J as the jPod/iSilhouette with 11 votes!
Ultimate Costume = Corpse Bride Britta with 6 votes but ineligible for prizes, with the Fighting Bridesmaids as 5, so they received the prize, which let Ben win Scariest
Spooky Scramble = Jeff J. with 13/13 = he claims he anagrammed the available letters & came up with Gaston Leroux without knowing the name! Suspicious you say? hmmm…
Name That Tune – Esoteric Pop Songs = Amy with 12.5/13 (missed the song name but got the artist on one)
Laudable Laboratory Libation = Volcano on the Rocks by Tracia
I’ll try to add some photos to this post later, but otherwise you’ll just have to wait a bit until I sort through the 500 or so pix and can post a gallery link…
Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!
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