Halloween!

[Sophist]

I hemmed my jeans.

***proud of self***

That's more than I can do!

I do the kind of "measuring by eye" method of hemming though, so it might be hit or miss whether I ruin a new pair of pants.

The jeans turned out spiffy though. There was a LOT of extra material at the bottom, even after I lopped some off. I did two rows of cross-stitches, the upper one in a nice lilac color and the lower in a light blue.

More often though I have a tendency to hem pants up too high and regret then that they're too short.

Haha, congrats Sophist. I have a lot of practice doing that, being short and all . I forgot I was supposed to hem my yoga pants after I altered the jacket. Those have been sitting there waiting to be hemmed since August .

I have another pair of trousers I bought with the jeans; I'm going to leave those to the professionals, lol.

[Civet]

The trick my mom taught me is to measure the new pants against your old ones. You line up the crotch areas so you're only measuring the legs to each other. Then you can pin them to be the same length as your pants that are the length you like. It's a good idea to try them on with the pins in (carefully, I've definitely pricked myself more than once doing this!) before sewing as well.

[Sophist]

Sometimes I get lazy, especially if I'm at the apartment and don't really have a good flat surface to lay them against. The last pair I finally decided to break out my white chalk pencil from my art case and do a proper straight line at where the cuff should end, hehe.

But yours is a good idea.

[goddessoflubbock]

They sell these clips, fairly cheaply, in a set of maybe 6, just for pant/skirt hemming. They have measurements on them and hold the hem up. I used them a lot. Someone out there thinks all fat women are 5"7!

DS school is having Halloween on Friday and the rules are such that it's no fun. Nothing scary. No gore. No fake weapons (yes I get that one). No masks or hats or "excessive makeup". Uh. Ok, Tammy Faye or Gene Simmons excessive? And my favorite! "Don't be a tart, cover your parts". I guess don't be a whore by showing us more was voted down? ROFL. Sorry but it leaves little. Oh yeah, no masks, hats or hoods. There goes monk.

[Civet]

I also use my white chalk pencil for marking things for sewing, haha. I used it on the jacket recently.

Those clips sound awesome, Goddess, maybe I should look into getting some. Hemming pants isn't too hard but it is kind of a pain.

Those Halloween costume rules are pretty much the same we had in high school and Jr. High. Except I remember one year that we weren't supposed to wear costumes at all for some reason (maybe this was after Columbine and when my school was paranoid about absolutely everything), but my friends and I cheated and wore small things like cat ears or elf ears anyway. This we could wear any day to school if we felt the inclination to do so (I wore a cat collar for awhile). I remember our teachers all thinking it was dumb we couldn't do costumes as well so rather than reporting us they told us they were amused and glad we were still in the spirit .

[Sophist]

They sell these clips, fairly cheaply, in a set of maybe 6, just for pant/skirt hemming. They have measurements on them and hold the hem up. I used them a lot. Someone out there thinks all fat women are 5"7!

Apparently ALL women are 5'7" so I've noticed...

DS school is having Halloween on Friday and the rules are such that it's no fun. Nothing scary. No gore. No fake weapons (yes I get that one). No masks or hats or "excessive makeup". Uh. Ok, Tammy Faye or Gene Simmons excessive? And my favorite! "Don't be a tart, cover your parts". I guess don't be a whore by showing us more was voted down? ROFL. Sorry but it leaves little. Oh yeah, no masks, hats or hoods. There goes monk.

What a crock! So it's basically "come in something black or orange but don't come in your costume"?

[goddessoflubbock]

DS said really nO one even tried dressing up, which is a shame. He said they had fun during band, the director had the sped kids (special education) come over to ToT in the band hall. He said it was cool except for the kid who took off screaming down the hall. Not sure why, but everybody else had fun so that was nice.

We are going to all hunker down in the living room with pop orn and a scary movie tomorrow night. Should be fun!

[Sophist]

I think I'm going to watch the movie, It.

[adhocisadirtyword]

Ava's going as a 99% protestor tonight. She's taking a backpack and a protesting sign.

[SomethingElse]

I haven't done anything particularly Halloweeny, yet, except for carve a couple of pumpkins. They look awesome, though. I only started carving them a couple of years ago, and I don't think I'm too bad at it. However, we keep talking about attempting a particularly impressive design (the kind where you don't always cut all the way through), and I said that I don't think I have the patience or the attention span for something like that (as it is, I was very focused on the first one because I was very particular about it not getting messed up, so ended up doing most of it, but then when we were doing the second one I got very bored and restless and distracted, and R kept having to get my attention and persuade me to do bits for her). So, R joked that my pumpkin carving would be REALLY amazing if I was on Ritalin, then later on said that she was actually quite serious about that and thought I'd be much more productive if I were taking it! So... it was funny at first, but I'm not sure if it's very funny now.

I was invited to a house party on Saturday with a nice enough bunch of people, but I was pretty sure that the host is a smoker, and I really didn't want to be stuck round someone's house with them smoking. So this week we mostly just watched a scary film each evening and followed it up with a few episodes of Are You Afraid Of the Dark? So far this week we watched Night of the Living Dead, Village of the Damned, The Twilight Zone movie, and a film that was a sort of comedy with scary elements called Attack The Block. I can't remember if we watched any others...

Tonight I've been invited out for a fancy dress 'party' at a club or to the cinema to watch Paranormal Activity 3. I quite want to get dressed up, so sort of want to go to the party thing, but I'm unsure of who is going and the proper details and I'm not particularly well kitted out (it would be a case of bunging on regular clothes, maybe a bloody t-shirt or something, and face make up, and going as a zombie or something. I have work tomorrow so couldn't have too much to drink or stay out too late... If I go to the cinema I have to watch a film I'm not that bothered about seeing (I thought the first film was really boring), and be with friends who I'm not feeling too sure of at the moment. I am actually quite tempted to just stay in, maybe see some Trick or Treaters, and watch another film or something. I'll probably end up letting R decide what we do.

[Sophist]

I loved Are You Afraid of the Dark! The weird thing is that seasons 1 and 2 aren't available through Amazon.com but they ARE available through Amazon.co.uk. So I just bought it. Thanks for reminding me.

[goddessoflubbock]

We watched the original Halloween tonight with the kids, then later DH and I watched Halloween IV. Good thing too, it was a lot gorier! Also a lot more "boobishness" as we call it LOL

[Sophist]

Ah, but did you watch Halloween II? If not, it's like only seeing half the story!

[goddessoflubbock]

Ah, but did you watch Halloween II? If not, it's like only seeing half the story!

Yes we saw that one a few years ago. Overall a good bunch of movies. I don't like the ones just released in the past few years tho. Too much gratuitous gore. And boobyishness

All our Halloween stuff is already packed away. Just the fall/Thanksgiving stuff remains.

I am already obsessing over my menu for Thanksgiving and what food goes in what bowls!

[SomethingElse]

I ended up putting my pumpkins in the window and hanging a skeleton up, seeing a few trick-or-treaters (we had more this year than we usually have, which was pretty cool, and mostly little kids with their parents which was nice, too, as usually we get older kids coming around acting like idiots and unsupervised).

Then I went to the cinema to see Paranormal Activity 3, which was pretty good (plenty of bits to make you jump and some really good effects, especially compared to what I've seen of the last two films where it seemed like hardly anything happened, really, although tbf I didn't watch either of them properly). There was a group of girls behind us who kept talking through the film (asking what was happening) and making themselves sound pretty dumb because they were blatantly asking really obvious questions, and literally wouldn't shut up all the way through it, but on the plus side it made it amusing and my friend admitted afterwards that without them the film would have been much scarier (in a bad way), so we all quite enjoyed having them behind us (which makes a nice change, as usually I find people like that annoying and they can make me feel quite anxious).

We sat right at the front, though, which I hate. I tend to find that tracking a large screen from too close makes my eyes feel 'funny', and gives me a headache and makes me feel sick. I've only been to the cinema with my friends once before and had forgotten that they opt to sit at front, just behind the bar (in our local cinema there's rows going back and upwards, and the front row has a bar in front of it, then there is the walkway/s going up to the back of that, and the walkway infront of the bar going across the room, and then there are seats even nearer the screen (including spaces for people to sit in their wheelchairs).

I like to sit at the back because I don't like having people behind me (in case they throw things, and because I feel like they might be watching me even though I know that's silly).