Man, Woman, Westie: November 2012

I have had acne problems off and on since I was 13. It never got to the point where it consumed my skin, but it stressed me out. I feel I finally have it under control with regular exfoliating and the right cleansers/moisturizers for my skin type. I do occasionally get a few spots - usually about the same time each month. I would like to never worry about my skin, but since I do, I've decided to have some fun with it. I researched some at home, all natural face masks and tried the one I liked the most. Its cinnamon and cumin!

The original recipe said to also use honey, but I could not reconcile putting something so sticky and potentially pore clogging on my face. I changed it to olive oil. A little went a long way - it really didn't take much to make a paste. I first exfoliated then I left the spices on for 10mins.

The cinnamon promotes circulation to the surface of your skin, thereby sweeping away any toxins that have built up under your skin. The cumin is anti-microbial so it will battle acne.

When I rinsed it off I noticed that my skin was a little flushed so the cinnamon must have been working! Also, the olive oil made my skin soooo soft. I think I'm going to keep this up.

Halloween is one of my FAVORITE holidays! Probably because my birthday comes just before. I had my annual themed Halloween costume party again this year. This year's theme which all of my decorations centered around, was Horror Movies. Decorating is about 70% of the fun for me!

These supplies...

became this!

Another 'craft' I made for the party was a life sized Freddy Krueger. This was out of PVC pipe, a foam head, a mask, and some old clothes. Nate came to town for a wedding and crashed at our place. He is not the biggest fan of Halloween, so naturally Erik and I wanted to have some fun. We built Freddy, and stood him up in the living room to surprise Nate as he came home that night. When we woke up this is how we found him.

Nate thought Freddy needed to get his beauty sleep

I put Freddy behind some ripped plastic right at the front door. He was back lit with a strobe light for extra creepy-ness!

I wanted it to look like there was blood all over my walls so I hung plastic covered in red paint all down the hallway and in my entry way. Making these plastic sheets was an ordeal! I initially tried to do it outside like a good responsible person who didn't want to get red paint all over her rented apartment. Well it was 40 degrees and my paint immediately went stiff. It refused to run down the plastic. I then added thinner to it thinking that would help. It really didn't and the paint started to clump and wasn't sticking to the plastic well. I now know that you can't add thinner to latex based paint - oops!

A movie I wanted to incorporate was SAW. I got this creepy little trike for $5 at a yard sale.

My next character was Michael Meyers. Building a whole person was a challenge so I wanted to avoid that again. He's just a foam head attached to my shelving in the second bedroom, but creepy right?

One of my besties, Kenny, came for the party. He made me a video of snow with the voice of the little girl from Poltergeist. It was the scene where she's stuck in the TV screaming "Mommy! I can't find you, Mommy!" Chills!

The rest of the second bedroom.

Here is a shot of the entrance to my bathroom. This is the sign I showed you in my preview post. Its a UPS box, christmas lights, and tissue paper. I treated a white shower curtain like the other plastic and back lit it with another strobe light. It was a super cool effect!

On the living room TV I had the cursed video from The Ring on loop with a skeleton dress up as the little girl from the well. That was the prop that actually scared me!

To keep the horror movie theme, I wanted to go as Carrie this year. My costume consisted of an $11 dress from Goodwill and a bunch of fake blood. Well at first it was that easy. Turns out the fake blood dried purple, so I had to go get some RIT fabric dye and try again. This dried pink so luckily the lighting was pretty low and no one could tell. I had red make up as blood dripping down my face and I got a blond wig that I poured fake blood into.