Our Halloween

Orange, black and white Empire State Building for Halloween

Okay, so this post is a little belated (with good reason, of course, but still). Halloween was three weeks ago. Do you even still care about our Halloween celebration? Well, try to take yourself out of Thanksgiving/Christmas mode and back to Halloween for just a few minutes. The "OMG I MUST BE ORDERLY" part of me cannot continue on with more recent recaps until Halloween is covered. Recapping our Florida trip first yesterday nearly killed me. I know, it's a sickness. I'm definitely a little OCD.

Our Halloween festivities started the Wednesday before Halloween, when we carved our pumpkin. We dressed Achilles in some Halloween finery and got to work. After several years of carving pumpkins together, we've got it pretty well down to a science. Eric does internet research for design inspiration (he holds our pumpkins to very high carving standards). I print it out. He cuts the top off and we scoop the goop out together.

Eric and Achilles scooping the goop

My turn!

Then I poke holes in the pumpkin to outline our design.

Tedious work

Then Eric does the hard part. He actually does the carving. He's a pro!

Eric expertly carves our pumpkin, with help from Achilles

Then I go back in and clean up the carving, so there's no pumpkin shavings hanging down.

I make Eric's work look extra good.

Then we clean up a bit, light the candle, and admire our hard work. This year, we carved my husband's favorite Sesame Street character, the Count. Little did we know that Sesame Street is celebrating it's 40th anniversary this year! We're so timely.

ONE pumpkin, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!

Then, of course, we dress the dog up in his yearly costume and take our Official Annual Halloween Dog Photo. You saw that one in my post on Halloween! But, just for good measure, here's another shot of Officer Achilles:


Awwww.

On Halloween proper, we had a full day of fun planned. Our plans ended up changing as the night went on though, and we barely did a single thing we planned! Our plan was to meet with friends at a bar in the Village at 2:30 p.m. to watch the UF v. UGA game. My friend Amanda is a Georgia fan, so we were hoping to create a Jacksonville-like environment for game watching. Then, we were going to walk over to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, which is sort of like the Easter Bonnet Parade in that anyone can dress up and walk in the parade. After that, we planned to go to another bar for a Southeastern Conference Alumni Costume Party.

But, plans change. We ended up staying in for the Gator game, largely to wait for updates on how Toni was doing, and also just for costume convenience. I wasn't sure if my costume would hold up for 12+ hours of fun (you'll see why in a minute!). We ended up meeting up with my friend Amanda and others at the bar at the end of the game (Go Gators!), then we walked over towards the parade. We stopped for pictures in Washington Square Park, which brings me to the great unveiling of our Halloween costumes:

TA-DA!

Dexter and his victim! You all know about my love of the Dexter series. I realize not all of my blog readers watch Dexter, so let me explain our costumes. Eric is wearing Dexter's "kill outfit" - the shirt, cargo pants, black gloves, and an apron. See below for reference:



In the second picture above, you also get a glimpse of Dexter's victim. When Dexter kills, he wraps his victim in saran wrap. Before he kills them, he cuts the victim's right cheek and takes a drop of blood which he keeps on a blood slide as a trophy of the kill.


So, I wrapped myself in saran wrap (I wore a nude-colored dress underneath it, don't worry!), put a fake cut on my cheek, and wore a bloodslide with a blood drop on it around my neck. It turned out fabulously! We got so many compliments on our costumes. Well, if people got it. If they got it, we were even some people's favorite costume of the night. Not everyone got it, of course. Some people thought I was any number of things, including "Tape," "Plastic Wrap Girl," "Saran Wrap Queen," etc. Ah well, I knew that would happen. I even had tourists taking my picture on the subway. Of course, I guess if you see a girl wearing this while vacationing in New York, you might take a picture, too:

The first and only time I will ever wear saran wrap on the subway.

Anyway. Back to our evening! We made our way to the parade, stopping at another bar for a quick drink along the way. This bar looked a little sketchy at first, but I decided it's just another cool thing about New York. It was called the Old Rabbit Club, and it is literally a hole in the wall. I wish I had taken a picture of the outside - you would never, ever find it if you didn't know it was there. The door is unmarked, and you walk down fire escape steps to get in. It was very dark and narrow, but with a very cool vibe. We all (Eric, me, Amanda and her friend Mike) shared some beers down there before heading back out for the parade.

With Amanda and Mike

Perfecting our Dexter pose (although Dexter's victims don't usually get to drink beer while being killed)

Unfortunately, by the time we left for the parade, it was POURING rain. We really lucked out with the weather in that it was surprisingly warm (of course my saran wrap probably helped, but I was perfectly comfortable temperature-wise all night), but after being clear and rain-free all day, it started pouring for the only part of the night we needed to be outside. But, Eric and I were DETERMINED to see this parade. It was on our list of "Things in New York To Do Once and Never Again." So we braved the elements and made our way out there. It was so, so unpleasant, and we could hardly get close enough to see anything, especially through everyone's umbrellas. This was the best view we could get:

Wow. Awesome.

So, needless to say, we stopped there for a few minutes just so we can say we saw it, then hightailed it out of there to the shelter of yet another bar.

Poor, wet Eric after roaming through the Village in a downpour!

Happy to be in out of the rain. Poor Amanda's hat is looking a little droopy and soggy.
Unforseen perk of a saran wrap dress: IT'S WATERPROOF! My costume rocked.

And that was where we stayed for the duration of the night. We never did make it back out to the SEC Costume Party. But, this bar had live music and we had a great time. A couple weird things about the bar, however: 1) They removed all the stools so nobody could sit, and 2) they didn't allow dancing! We actually got yelled at for dancing to the live music. That's crazy talk. But, Amanda and I are rebels and danced anyway as the night went on. All in all, we had a very fun time.

Dancing, because rules are made to be broken.

More Dexter fun

Modeling Mike's hat

My new favorite serial killer

Eric and I eventually headed out to check out other costumes on the streets. The rain had finally stopped and we had the urge to be amongst the craziness to really see all there was to be seen. We did some walking around, and saw our fair share of New York Halloween fun. I had two favorite costumes of the night:

Ricky Vaughn (AKA Wild Thing!) from "Major League!"

WALL-E!

When we had our fill of the crowds and costumes, we tried unsuccessfully to get a cab home, so we ended up taking the subway. We made it back to our apartment safe and sound - what a fun Halloween!