Scary to be Single

I saw a lot of awesome, life-like, terrifying costumes on Instagram this year for Halloween. However, for me, the scariest thing about Halloween was being single. Single and 36. Single and 36 at a church single's ministry Halloween mixer. Single and 36 at a church single's ministry Halloween mixer where 90% of the guys there were under 30. Everyone was so young there that they didn't understand my costume or lack thereof. I wore my camouflage maxi dress and told people I was a No Limit Soldier. No one got the joke. 

For about an hour I sat in the corner nibbling on a zebra cake, wondering where I went wrong. The music was good. I mean, you haven't lived until you've seen young Christians two-step to Kendrick Lamar. And God knows I love a good Little Debbie cake. But sitting in the corner alone, away from the comfort of my blanket and space heater, was just too much. I wanted to go home so badly that for about five minutes, I sat with my eyes closed, attempting to teleport. Spoiler alert: it didn't work. I quickly and discretely left the party, stood by the church sign and cried while waiting on my Lyft ride. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a fun Friday night. 

You know what else is scary: I still have hope in finding love. I am nearly 40, I own nothing, I'm overweight, and it has been so long since I washed my hair that I'm afraid that if I take off my bonnet, a long, Rapunzel-esque deadlock will fall to the ground in a midst of dust and caked up Shea butter flakes. Yet I still can not shake this very real desire to share my life with someone who will think that my turbo-dread is cool...before doing me the favor of cutting it off in my sleep. The eternal optimism of the stressed-out mind: it's a real thing. 

When I got home, I took off my dress, slipped into an old tunic that I wear as a nightgown, laid down and stared up at the ceiling while sucking on a jolly rancher that came in the goody bag from the party. At least I had candy to get me through the night which was the best Halloween treat of them all, word to Mia X. 

Redbox.com has the best movies for Halloween

This Halloween is going to be a chill Halloween for me. Even though I am in my 30s, I usually try to dress up and go door to door for candy. No one ever withholds goodies from me, even though I am clearly not a kid. But this year, I don't have the energy to get over on the system. I am going to tuck it in and watch some of my favorite scary movies until I fall asleep, high on miniature Snicker's and unsalted popcorn. Below are some Halloween thriller must-sees, courtesy of Redbox.com.

13 Scariest Classics for Halloween

Psycho (1960)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Jaws (1975)
Carrie (1976)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)
The Shining (1980)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Saw (2004)
The Conjuring (2013)

13 Halloween Favorites for the Whole Family 

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

E.T. (1982)
Beetlejuice (1988)
The Addams Family (1991)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Casper (1995)
Corpse Bride (2005)
Monster House (2006)
Coraline (2009)
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
ParaNorman (2012)
Frankenweenie (2012)

Skyy Hadley's DIY Halloween Nails

Halloween is a great time to get super experimental with your nails. Celebrity nail artist Skyy Hadley, who has worked with Faith Evans and Janelle Monae, has the recipe for Halloween nails that is so cool they're scary!

Skyy recommends doing your nails the day before Halloween at home and giving yourself 45 minutes to an hour of time to complete it. Follow Skyy’s DIY stiletto nail tutorial.

1. Sanitize hands and nails.
2. Start out with a square nail by clipping your nail straight across.
3. Clip the uppermost portion of the two sides diagonally into a triangle.
4. With a file, focus on curving the sides evenly to get a teardrop shape that softens the triangle.
5. Whatever you do on one side, do on the other side. For example: If you do three files on one side, do three files on the other so that it looks symmetrical.

DIY Try: Halloween Candy Corn Nails

Halloween is all about getting dressed up! While putting your costume together, don't forget your nails! Try this candy corn look from Skyy Hadley, celebrity manicurist and owner of As U Wish Nail Salon. 

1.       Paint one half of the nail in white (Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Get Mod) and the other in yellow (Lauren B. Coachella Valley Sun).

2.       Apply nail art stickers (hole reinforcers cut in half). Apply two on each nail as shown below.

 

3.       Working on one nail at a time, paint the area inside the stickers with orange nail polish (Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Tribal Sun).

4.       Carefully remove the stickers.

5.       Repeat on all other nails. Allow 5 minutes for your nail design to dry and finish it with a coat of a top coat (Lauren B. Gel-like Top Coat).

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Get Mod

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Tribal Sun

Lauren B. Coachella Valley Sun

Lauren B. Gel-like Top Coat

Free: Zoya's Spooky Glam Trio

For those of us that love spooky, dark cosmetics year-round, Halloween is a great time to stock up on supplies. From now until Halloween, you can get the Zoya's Spooky Glam Trio free with any $25 purchase. Use code GLAM3. The trio includes the colors Storm (black), Mimi (purple), and Amy(orange).  Get your trio today at Zoya.com. 

       

An East Point 'Ween

I was a cat or a mouse, not sure which.

I made sure to get good candy. I hated it when I was little when I only got gum and peppermints.

The first treaters.

Best costume, but only because I couldn't get a pic of the kid that was a flying purple people eater.

 The demanding bunch. They told me what pieces they wanted and dug in my candy bowl!

Cute right?

These girls are cousins, not sisters. Don't get it wrong!

 

Last year no one knocked on my door for Halloween. I was VERY disappointed, because Halloween is one of my fav holidays. But this year, it was almost like they wouldn't stop coming! The treaters wiped me out of candy in less than an hour! Fran alerted me that I gave them too much each, lol. But they were all so adorable...and weirded out when I asked to take their pics after I gave them the candy. There was a lot of rush and fuss on my end for just 45 minutes out of the night, but it was worth it.



The Dying Art of Halloween

I sit here this early Sunday morning, literally up to my expanding waistline in candy wrappers. Last night I went trick or treating with my little brother and sister. We hit up four subdivisions in four hours, and returned home fat and happy with sacks of candy as big as Santa's bag. Ug, it was beautiful.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It is. And it saddens me that every year I see less and less people celebrating it. This year, more houses were dark, alerting treaters that residents of that address were not participating in this fantastical Fall festivity. I want to tell myself that it is because the economy is bad, and folks just don't have the money to be passing out candy to other people's children, but my heart tells me it is because some religious wingnuts think that Halloween is some type of Devil day or something.

I first started hearing this loonie talk when I was in middle school. I took the same set of siblings treating one year, and almost everyone had these notes on their doors saying they were going to celebrate Hallelujah Day, not Halloween, but Hallelujah Day, at some type of church festival or that they did not celebrate it at all and they suggested we go home before the very roof of Hell opened and swallowed us up. Then there was the year that my neighborhood single handily canceled Halloween because it fell on a Sunday. Some people will even make that lame 80s argument that Halloween is dangerous. Seriously, I have not heard anything about folks putting crack in candy since I was five! Sadly, folks just don't have the money to drug our kids like they used to.

Question: How can you not LOVE Halloween? Not even God can be against the little baby cakes dressing up like Spider Man and lady bugs. I saw a giraffe at the grocery store yesterday, and my heart melted. The little girl had a little giraffe booty and tail. It was simply one of the sweetest things I have ever seen! Plus, you get free candy, see other people's costumes, and some people even decorate their houses really cool, making their homes treater friendly.

This year I was also stunned by the disrespect of the holiday by the treaters. They were not following the sacred Halloween rules. For one, you don't bombard homes in groups and catch the resident off guard. That's rude! And you don't go to houses with good candy twice and then get pissy if they remember you and won't give you any candy. You don't bang on doors. You don't ring the doorbell more than once. You don't run across people's lawns and flower beds. You let the younger kids go ahead of you. You wear a costume and YOU MUST, you must, say trick or treat! You don't just stand on someone's porch with your hand out and a mean mug! Sigh...I saw a big disregard for these rules today. I don't know about you, but I blame the parents.

As you probably already figured, I am planning what I am going to be next year. If I can figure out how to make it, I would love to be a seahorse. Oh well, I have a whole year to decide. For now, I shall munch on my six pounds of candy.