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It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

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This is almost definitely gonna be a big post with lots of pictures, that will take hours to write. I also need to talk about a new piercing in here somewhere.

We had our annual Halloween Extravaganza! I’ve been waiting all year for it, and now it’s happened, so I feel weird about it because I love it so much and then it just goes away again. The 31st itself is still to come and I intend to have a snuggly spoopy time under a sofa blanket with Will.

The last time the 31st was on a Saturday was in 2015, that’s still the best party I’ve ever hosted. It ran from midday to midnight and everything was pretty much perfect. Since then I’ve held parties on the nearest weekend to the 31st, but I’ve never topped 2015, something always goes a bit wrong.

The next time Halloween is on a Saturday is in 2020, and I want that to be our wedding day.

 

I actually realised I had tonsillitis on Wednesday, which explained why I’d been feeling ill, and also why I had a sudden ear infection spreading up from my inner ear. It finally occurred to me to check on my sore throat with a mirror and a torch and, bingo, pus on my tonsils!

Nowhere near as bad as when I had Glandular Fever years ago (needed to go into hospital for that), but still pretty gross and painful. The ear side of things has improved a lot, still got some residual throat nonsense going on which undoubtedly wasn’t helped by screaming at films.

Anyway, here are some photos from this year:

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Beautiful spoopy floof.
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Wearing her special Halloween collar.
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My initial look was not too horrendous.
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Waiting.
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A light-up balloon in action.
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The table.

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I’m quite proud of how my cookies turned out!

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The vodka tote in the background ?
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I was very determined not to run out of mixer.
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Everything is so beautiful!

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Ma soeur! Also, Will sprayed my hair green, but he went a bit too enthusiastically over my fringe, green dripped all down my face and I had to wash it off!
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My stick-on Halloween nails. That’s a bucket list item ticked off, but also, the glue was a bit of a nightmare. It went everywhere on one finger, and I bent one of my fingernails back during the day, because I bent the fake nail back on top. Also, even though they said “trick or treat” in the product photo, the actual nails just say “of treat,” which I don’t mind so much as it’s kind of a running joke now.
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Using my hands was actually pretty difficult, they were longer than I’d have my own nails, and I ripped them off towards the end of the evening. Which took part of my real nails off with them!
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Beautiful cat o’lantern.
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A spoopy alien!
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Ma soeur’s costume. She was originally gonna go for the TR Chronicles catsuit, but misplaced her holsters so became a cat instead.

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“Oui, c’est Ananas”

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A floaty ghost.
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Spoopy drink marker!
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Pumpkin face cookie.

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The lighting of the candles.

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I love these lights so much.
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The glowing of the sticks.

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I thought a huge spider was running down the wall and I got a spoop, but it was just a leaf falling funny.

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Telefrancais with dinner.

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Ghost House drinking game (a.k.a. watch Filmcow’s Ghost House videos and drink every time he says “ghost house,” “spooky ghost,” or “oh shit.”)

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I got a spoop when I took this picture, because I couldn’t see that my sister had put her cat ears on the table in the dark, so I was like “What is thaaaaaat.”
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The lantern of our Lord.
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Monsieur Ananas, guide us with your burning eye-lights.
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Spoopy floof goes to spoopy bed at either 2 or 3am (I am confused by the clocks going back as to whether it ended up being 1 or 2am in the end).
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Guardian of the door.
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A UV-reactive ghost who is hard to photograph.
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Will’s very unsettling mask that wound up being cut into a different shape. It alarms me.

Our spooky background playlist:

(what’s embedded here might change in the future if we adjust the same list.)

I’m very proud of the cookies I made! It was my first time even cracking an egg into a bowl and it went really well. It was surprisingly tiring, especially on one’s hand bones, but it went really well.

The stag cookies served as this year’s Kornigou, and I made them with this cookie cutter. I got a 6 inch one, but I’d advise you to go a bit smaller, as it turns out it’s harder to lift the cookies onto the baking tray without any breakages, if they are bigger. My Halloween cookie cutters are from here, and are much easier to work with, although they did blob out a bit in the oven, which may well have been due to my baking!

 

My sister brought up some tea tree oil for me, which I’m really glad about because I love putting it in oil burners. I like the smell but mainly, I want it to disinfect the air and get in my sinuses. People believe a lot of wooey things about essential oils, but tea tree really is antimicrobial (don’t put it on your pets though, they will get ill).

When Dettol make an antibacterial burner oil or wax melts, then I’ll start using those, but in the meantime I enjoy tea tree in a burner when I get ill.

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Get in my crevices.

Mike and my sister both stayed overnight with us. I wasn’t out of bed before Mike left, but I did get up and hang out with my sister before she had to catch her train. This hanging out included . . . piercing our own ears with a needle kit she bought.

I had three piercings before this; one in my left lobe, two in my right. My sister had her normal lobes done as a kid I think, but wanted a helix piercing. I have wanted a vertical industrial piercing (often known as a “scaffold” piercing here in the UK) for years, I think I bought bars for it at the same time as I got jewellery for my lobes, which must have been at least two or three years ago, so I’ve been sitting on it for a long time.

I can’t spend money on piercings at this point in my life. I don’t really need to elaborate on that further. I know all about the risks of piercing myself, there’s nothing new that you can tell me. Me and my sister were discussing kits as far back as last year, before I even moved house. It has been discussed to death.

I don’t think I’d be comfortable piercing anything other than ears, things like lips or tongue have too much risk of hitting a vein for me. Whereas you check with a torch for ear vessels beforehand. Some people are comfortable piercing their own tongues or whatever and I’m not going to tell them not to do that.

And yes, it is actually legal to pierce yourself in England, in fact regulations for businesses are loose as all hell, they have to register with the local health department but other than that, people really don’t need any experience or training in order to be employed as a piercer.

Warning: Some of the below images contain blood.

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My sister’s helix went totally without incident.
ear types
I went for the vertical industrial as illustrated in this diagram.

piercing-chart-piercing-tattoo

Orbital piercing
I’d also consider an orbital in this style on my other ear, but I think that would be too hard to pierce myself.
Vertical industrial info
Some information about vertical industrials from t’internet.
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Needle through the first half, no bleeding at all.
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Snagged a bunch of capillaries in the bottom half, fair bit of blood that looked worse than it actually was.
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Bar halfway in.
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Big ol’ chunk of tissue inside the needle.
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From behind. The bar is deliberately long in case of swelling. I have a shorter one for when it’s eventually healed. Not sure why I have that weird fold behind my ear.
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Finished piercing.

It didn’t actually hurt too much at all during the piercing process, although I paused once the needle had gone through the first part, and then rested again when the bar was going in through the upper ear too.

I will warn others with POTS and other things that cause heart rhythm issues, to be a bit careful if doing something like this, because when I first put the needle in, even though the pain wasn’t bad, my body got a bit of a shock and my heart went all jittery for a while. I temporarily lost vision in my right eye, I think because all the blood rushed to my left ear!

 

Later in the evening though, the pain really picked up. Which is to be expected, piercings hurt, and cartilage piercings are tougher to deal with. It also turns out that a vertical industrial is deemed way more difficult than a horizontal one. So yeah, it hurts a lot now and it’s a bit difficult to sleep. But it distracts from tonsillitis, my joints are pretty much on par with it though. My knees and hands are quite angry right now.

It even hurts in my ear when I smile! And I’m smiling a lot, because it’s Halloween.
I think that might be more to do with the infection having spread up my inner ear from my tonsils, than from the piercing though.

 

 

In other news, it’s my birthday in less than a month! *cough*

 

I also wanted to ask:

  • Does anyone else get a weird taste in their mouth when they burn themselves? I accidentally touched a hot candle holder at the party, it gave me a weird taste that I’ve always got (e.g. when touching hot radiators as a kid) and I wonder if other people get it?
  • If anyone can recommend a good jar for storing drinking straws?

Happy Halloween!

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