Halloween Time

Halloween is upon us.

The freakish holiday that makes no logical sense.

I am sure it has roots in some grand historical tradition, but I have no clue what.

But regardless of its background, or lack thereof, Halloween is here in full force.

It is amazing how much this holiday changes for you over time.

For most holidays, it seems that traditions stay relatively the same.

For example, no matter how old you are on Thanksgiving you are going to eat turkey.

On St. Patrick's Day you will wear green.

Come Christmas day, you will open up presents.

However, depending on your age your Halloween activities will change drastically

For babies and young children this holiday can be a bit dramatic.

You are dressed up in some constricting, uncomfortable costume because your parents think it is sweet/precious/funny/adorable.

You are then dragged around town in the freezing weather for no other apparent reason than your parents want to show you off to their neighbors.

You don't even recognize your own mother and all the weird noises are scary.

You are not yet capable of eating hard candy without choking, so there really is no pay off  here.

.

In elementary school, this holiday is all about the costume. 

You decide what you want to be months before hand and pester your mother for weeks to purchase/buy your perfect costume.

The worst case scenario on Halloween is that it will snow and your mom will make you wear a big coat that will completely cover up your amazing costume

Halloween costumes are the talk of recess and you make sure that no one else is going to copy your brilliant idea and look like your twin during the annual Halloween parade.

Next to costumes in importance is the candy. 

Oh the candy.

A simple bag will not be sufficient to contain all of your trick or treat treasures.

Nope, you have to revert to the pillowcase.

You trick or treat with your parents (embarrassing) or if you are lucky enough with a group of friends.

After you finish up knocking on all the doors within walking distance, you go home, drink some hot apple cider, and proceed to make yourself sick by consuming copious amounts of candy.

In high school, the Halloween dynamic shifts once again.

Costumes begin to get sluttier. (Think of the Mean Girls quote of Halloween being an excuse for girls to wear lingerie in public)

Any trick or treating on your part is likely to receive a rolling of the eyes by any of your neighbors.

So instead you spend the spookiest night of the year at some Halloween party with friends,

likely to end with a scary movie and cuddling with new love interests.

In college, Halloween becomes all about the dance party.

There are endless places around town to get your groove on  and bump and grind against masked strangers.

Costumes have much less thought put into them, and are generally thrown together the day/morning before.

Costumes become even more risque. 

Candy is all but forgotten at this stage.

Newlywed Halloween.

Couples try to come up with some creative matching costume to impress all of their other couple friends with.

They will likely attend some sort of couple Halloween party,

where everyone will participate in fun games and activities, with pumpkin carving and pumpkin cookies likely, and most importantly be ridiculously in love and adorable. 

Middle Aged Halloween.

You throw on some scrubs and call yourself a doctor if you bother to come up with a costume at all.

You take your kids trick-or-treating for a few hours or stay home to pass out the goodies.

Mothers get stressed out about sewing the perfect costume for their kids and dads get stressed out about the expensive pressure from the Jonses to provide the neighborhood kids with king-sized candy bars.

It largely is just a nuisance of a holiday.

Elderly Halloween.

What are all these crazy kids wearing?

Back in my day, fashion was much more dignified.

The Ever Allusive Engagement Pictures

I apologize that this blog is becoming some what of a wedding blog.

I just cannot help myself.

Planning a wedding is occupying a great deal of my free time and so naturally when I sit down to write my weekly MCOMM blog, my mind naturally jumps to something wedding related.

This week's subject : Engagement pictures.

An issue of monumental importance.

These pictures, especially the one you choose to include in your invitations, make a huge a statement about who you are as a couple.

Getting perfect picture is apparently your ticket into 'blissful marriage status'.

Your engagement picture is supposed to translate into

"Look world, we are in love. We are beautiful. We are happy. We are poised and elegant. Aren't we perfect for each other? Isn't the fact that we are getting married the best news you have ever heard?"

-Okay this may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I still say the engagement pic says a whole lot about a couple-

Capturing this perfect picture is by no means an easy task though.

A few key elements have to be considered.

#1-The setting.

It should be beautiful, simple, and not too distracting, and perfectly lit.

In my personal opinion, the location also needs to make sense.

I mean, come on people. How often do you pass a field and see an antique, avacado green couch just sitting in the middle, waiting for a trendy couple to come and take a seat?

I submit never.

#2-The outfits

Picking out clothing for engagement pictures is a process, there are just so many options!

Formal or Casual? Fun or classy? Colors or Neutrals?

The list goes on and on. 

Then you have to decide how how well the bride and groom will coordinate.

Do you want to go matchy-matchy, kinda go together, or each do your own thing?

There is no single right answer, but whatever you choose it better look good!

#3- The pose

Oh the pose. So many things to say.

The choices couples make in this department are widespread, and often quite bizarre.

My personal favorites are the ones where you cannot even see their faces, where the couple appears to be acting out some sexual fantasy that you just feel uncomfortable looking at it, where the couple is trying hard to be super cutesy and different, or the ones where they just look so awkward you cannot help but chuckle a little bit.

And you know you have seen each and everyone of these poses haha.

Needless to say, be careful in this department.

After taking each of these three factors into consideration, Paul and I were all set to have the perfect engagement picture session yesterday.

We picked everything out. I got my nails done  (you gotta have pretty fingers to showcase the ring, right?), the weather was absolutely gorgeous and sunny, I had my hair done, and I was driving up to Salt Lake to get my make up done when my cell phone rang.

It was my photographer.

Rescheduling.

For next week.

When there is a 60% chance of rain.

Shoot.

But rain or shine, we are still determined to get that picture perfect engagement shot :)

The end.

Have Your Cake....

I am currently in the middle of planning a wedding.

This is basically a full-time job if you were not aware.

Trying to balance all the planning and appointments with school and the job that actually pays me is quite the juggling act.

Now, through this whole process I promised myself that I would not be a bridezilla in any way, shape, or form. I wanted the planning process to be a pleasant one, that my mother and I could look back upon with found memories.

Don't get me wrong though, my refusal to be a bridezilla does not mean that I don't care how everything turns out.

Quite the opposite is true actually, I have had a very specific idea of how I want my wedding for a very long time and they are not changing anytime soon.

I knew exactly what I wanted for my dress, colors, flowers, invitations, music, food, and reception. 

Yes, I was that girl who started planning her wedding before she even completed her first year of middle school.

I am not ashamed to admit it, and to be honest it has made planning the wedding easier.

However, there was one thing that somehow escaped the 'dream wedding' fantasy of my twelve-year-old imagination.

The cake. 

As I daydreamed about cutting the wedding cake alongside my handsome prince, I somehow left out the part about what the cake actually looked like.

Shocking, I know. 

My irresponsible lack of vision in this department has left me in quite the predicament.

I don't know what I want. 

This is a brand new territory for me.

I know that I want something beautiful, classy, and traditional that will match the rest of the wedding and that I don't want one of those brightly-colored, topsy-turvy, cartoonish cakes that could easily be mistaken for a seven-year old's birthday cake. 

That is about it.

I am lost when it come to pan shapes, frostings, number of tiers, flavors, patterns, embellishments, details, monograms, edible flowers, everything.

Come to find out, not only to you have to design a task, but you also have to design everything that goes around, beneath, and on top of this overpriced culinary creation.

Sigh.

I met with the fabulously talented lady who will be making my cake and was able to pull together a plan for this cake.

It was pretty and I thought I was content.

However, after an intense, wedding detail soul searching that occurred when I couldn't sleep at three o'clock in the morning last week, I decided that I did not like it anymore.

It was not what I wanted to cut into on the happiest day of my life after all.

So I now have to go back to square one and try to figure out what I really do want.

Wedding blogs be warned. This is going to be a long process.

Sigh.

Good thing it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind right?

Wish me luck

My Weekend Assignment

This last weekend I was assigned the curious task of 'buying a stranger a coke' (caffeine free of course)

To be honest the assignment took me off guard. 

I thought about how I would react if a complete stranger walked up to me, did something nice for me, and walked away without an introduction or explanation.

I might be a little bit shocked.

I might think the person was weird, or maybe even a little bit crazy.

I might wonder what I had done to merit such an act of service.

I might wonder what I was doing to appear to be a pitiful charity case in desperate need of some help.

After pondering this issue for quite some time I decided that I would most likely just be thrilled to have gotten a free coke and go happily on my way.

Giving someone else this satisfaction sounded like a pretty good idea, so I decided to just embrace this assignment.

This weekend my fiancee and I went on a road trip down to St. George for my good friend's wedding.

We had a great time, and were able to the whole trip quite inexpensively between staying at my grandparent's condo for free and taking advantage of the plethera of food available to us at the wedding luncheon and reception. 

The whole expense we really could not avoid was gas.

Luckily, gas these days is not as expensive as it was a few summers ago, when the price tag dangerously approached five dollars a gallon.

That being said, it is far from the dollar-a-gallon deal we had going for us awhile ago.

The cost definitely adds up over several hours of driving, and my heart always sinks a little when I see the gas light go on in my little corolla.

As I thought about it, I decided that I would much rather have some free gas than a measly can of carbonated soda.

Because of this, I left a ten dollar gas credit at the neighborhood Texaco for the next person who came in to buy gas.

I have no idea how that person reacted.

I just know that I loved thinking about it.

I am sure it made their day just a little bit brighter, even if they did think whoever left it was weird.

And maybe one day karma will act in my favor and I will get a 'free coke'.

If gas prices rise anymore I sure hope so :)