Good morning!
Matt and I had such a blast yesterday for Halloween. Here we are as creepy dead zombies. Scared? 🙂 Oh and yes, I’ve been told zombies wear fleece jackets.
Matt and I had plans to head over to my parent’s neighborhood because their neighbors host a block party every year – this is the 11th annual and it gets more and more epic each year! Remember when I went a few years ago as Little Bo Beep? (I think that’s one of the best blog post titles I’ve ever come up with, btw – “Little Bo Beep Lost Her Sheep, But Found Beer!” Lol)
Clearly Matt and I didn’t plan ahead and had absolutely no costume plans, so I swung by Target on the way home from work to see what I could come up with. I ended up grabbing a black wig and a Halloween makeup kit and set to work making myself over when I got home.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually done a scary costume before! It was fun. 🙂 First, I dressed in all black and put the wig on. Then, I painted my face white using the little makeup triangles and made big black circles around my eyes. The last step was adding a little fake blood (also included in the kit) around my mouth for good measure. And voila! Ready to scare some kids.
Photo via my Instagram (username: fANNEtasticfood)
But first, I set out to scare Matt, who still wasn’t home from work. When I heard his key in the lock, I stood right by the door creepily so he’d see me when he walked in. Lol. I’m weird. He was more amused than scared, but I at least surprised him. 😉
Matt was originally thinking of borrowing a big banana costume from a friend, but we decided we wouldn’t really match very well (a large funny banana + an evil ghoul? Awkward) and he was jealous of my makeup, so I set to making him up, too! I did the same makeup on him and he added some “stitches” for good measure as well using a black makeup pencil. Then, I added some fake blood on to his “stitches.”
ROAR!
We had fun with it, as you can see. 😉 The block party was as awesome as always, too! The neighborhood really goes all out and it’s so much for everyone of all ages.
The highlight every year is a haunted house in one of the neighbor’s garages! It’s a collaborative effort that usually takes months to put together. Awesome, right?
Even better was that some of the original photos in this collage of creepy photoshopped stuff on the wall in the “haunted house” were taken at our wedding! All the neighbors were there in attendance. 🙂 We were all joking we looked a liiiiittle bit different this time vs. last time we saw them (e.g. at the wedding). 🙂
There was also tons of food and drinks around! There was a keg for the adults as well as some wine, people brought food to share based on the letter of their last name (e.g. fruit/veggies, chips/crackers, desserts, whatever), and the neighbors also provide a TON of hot dogs every year for the main course. This year they said they cooked 320 between all of them – impressive!
I had two hot dogs and some veggies, cheese, and crackers. Plus, two small glasses of red wine, to match my bloody mouth. 🙂
When the party was over, we hung out with my mom and handed out candy for a little while.
And then, around 7:30, Matt and I headed off to our next adventure – Markoff’s Haunted Forest! Right before leaving for the block party, I was looking up the haunted forest schedule online – it’s my favorite one in the area by far and we hadn’t gone yet this year since we’d been so preoccupied with the wedding! I was thinking we could go this weekend, but when I got on their website I saw that last night (Halloween) was their closing night. Oh no! Matt and I decided spur of the moment to go ahead and go that night. Sometimes, you just need a little weeknight adventure!
It’s a bit of a drive (about an hour in the middle of nowhere in MD) so we arrived at the haunted forest around 8:45. This place is so freaking cool. Best in the area, hands down!
There’s a big bonfire where you can hang out and wait for your ticket to be called to go on the trails, as well as all sorts of other activities you can buy tickets for (a haunted hayride, death jump, haunted bus, etc.). They normally have two trails but since it was their last night, they combined the best of both trails into one mega hybrid trail. SO cool. We hadn’t been in a few years and they had a lot of really cool stuff – it keeps getting better!
This creepy carnival scene was one of the highlights:
I didn’t get any other photos because I was too busy screaming (and it was really dark), but basically you walk through the woods on a trail lit by candles and come upon various scare structures. They do such an awesome job with the set up and the costumes!
During the trail, we saw people ziplining above us. We did the zipline here once in the past, but it was just a zipline over the field they’re next to. Apparently the zipline through the woods is brand new as of September! We decided we had to try it. 🙂 It was a little pricey but worth it!
To get up to the first platform they lift you up on this moving platform – way easier than the last time we did this when they had you climb up those scary poles to the right. Eeek!
Here I am, all geared up and ready for the zipline! Oh and yes, we went in our scary costumes, although I did change to jeans and running shoes since we’d be on a muddy trail. We fit right in with our makeup. 🙂
Weeee! The staff zipline guys thought this was my real hair, btw. Hehe.
The canopy tour zipline was SO cool – there were 5 separate ziplines that took you all through the forest above the scary trails. In between each zipline was a platform and there were also a couple bridges you had to climb up occasionally to get up to a higher platform so you could zip down again. They were kind of creepy!
Action shot of Matt:
Another creepy bridge:
I wish I could have gotten a better picture of the sky but it was so cool looking. Perfect for Halloween!
What a fun, random, spur of the moment night. We didn’t get home til after midnight but it was worth it!
What did you do for Halloween? What were you dressed as? And any other haunted trail/haunted house lovers out there? 🙂
