Simply Spooktacular

Let's be spooky. Let's have fun.
We'll scare ourselves before we're done
with ghosts and goblins, winds that howl,
things that fly and things that prowl.
We'll talk about such creepy stuff,
until we all get scared enough
to hear the things we cannot see,
and see the things that just can't be.
Let's be spooky, you and me.

On Hallowe'en the thing
you must do
Is pretend that nothing
can frighten you
An' if somethin' scares you
and you want to run
Jus' let on like
it's Halloween fun!

MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Jolly Pirate

Allelujah!

After much hoping and wishing and praying, it finally happened! The loony stage mother has emerged victorious in the long drawn-out War of the Costumes. WOOHOO!

Partly victorious, that is.

Although I was able to successfully slip our enfant terrible into his red and white striped pants, tattered top and snug black vest, he adamantly refused to wear his black eyepatch and bandana. Without said accessories, our perky tot looked more like a gigolo dancer than a swaggering sea marauder!

I thus had to do some quick thinking and improvise by printing out a huge skull and crossbones insignia on a sheet of paper, cutting it out and taping it to his white shirt. I even threw in a gold plastic hook in the off chance that he would enjoy brandishing it around.

The end result: Our garbed Halloweener gladly suffered the indignity of his silly ensemble due to his own fascination with the plastered skull & crossbones on his chest. He also enjoyed converting the hook into a hat for his head and gleefully wielded a drinking straw as his select weapon of choice.

Here are some of the photos taken at The Palms Country Club Annual Halloween Party we attended yesterday:

Thank goodness, our reluctant pirate turned out to be as jolly as could be.

Happy Halloween from my family to yours!!!

9 of 999

This time, I’ve been tagged by Queen Mimi herself.

WEIRD!

No, I am not saying that Mimi is weird.

What I am saying is that this meme is weird.

There are no questions to answer. I have been handed the curious task of simply listing nine weird things about myself and then tagging nine others to do the same.

Of course, the challenge now for me lies in choosing 9 out of the 999 or more oddities I possess!

Hmmmmm.

1. Say where?!?

I have absolutely no sense of direction. Maps, compasses, street signs are just a bunch of jumbled, garbled, Greek symbols to me. My driver’s license is useless because even if I know how to drive, I have no idea how to get to where I’m going. If I joined The Amazing Race, I would not make it past the first pit stop. Heck, I wouldn’t even know how to get to it! I don’t need to watch the TV show Lost because I AM LOST ENOUGH.

Click on this to get a clearer picture of just how lost I am.

2. OUCH...I did it again!

I am a major clutz. I fall and bump into and over anything and everything. Black and blues dotting my body are nothing new since I always hit furniture corners, jutting doorknobs, and such.

When I was a teen-ager, I stumbled and slid down the fifteen hard steps of a wooden staircase as I rushed down to get a phone call from a boy I liked. When I got to the phone, I pretended nothing was wrong even if tears of pain were already streaming down my eyes!

Heels to me are an emergency waiting to happen; I still wear them anyway.

3. Shy Girl

I am shy.

But nobody believes me when I say so.

You know, I really am.

I just make a supreme effort to overcome it.

Wipe that incredulous look off your face.

And stop laughing! :p

4. The Eye Knows

I have an inborn talent for spotting the most gorgeous man in a sea of a thousand males from a hundred miles away.

I am only mildly exaggerating.

And I am only mildy using this meme as an excuse to post another hot picture of Reynaldo Gianecchini.

Yowza!

5. Bedimpled Babe


I have more than seven dimples on my face. These visible indentations are supposed to be aberrations. Fortunately, such abnormalities are considered by most to be kind of cute.

They say it is now possible to have one or both cheeks surgically modified to create a dimple. This operation can cost around $500 per cheek.

So now I know I have about $3,500 worth of weird holes on my face. Woohoo!

6. Crossword Crazed

I solve crosswords to de-stress and calm my mind. I always have sheafs of unanswered puzzles stashed and ready for this purpose. When I am in crossword thinking mode, I automatically zone out. Do not disturb me!

7. Secret Dork

I am a closet nerd. I actually liked school.

I always did my homework and I was never tardy or absent. I ended up giving the valedictory address in high school and I graduated Magna Cum Laude from college. I got a scholarship for my Master’s in Business Management Degree, which I completed with Distinction.

But I also partied a lot and generously let my classmates copy from me so nobody would think I was a complete dork!

I think it worked.

BWaHaHa!

8. Flawless Writer

I am absolutely anal when it comes to writing letters and cards. If I inadvertently make a mistake, I cannot bring myself to cross out a word. I have to throw away the paper I am writing on and start anew on a clean page. It has to be perfect.

9. Gal Smiley

I smile too much. Miss Congeniality is my vibe. It makes me appear more approachable than I would like to seem. Complete strangers don’t think twice about talking to me. Strange men don't hesitate to chat me up, even when my husband is around. People expect me to be forever nice and sweet and accommodating.

Sometimes, I want to just scowl and growl and pout and be left alone.

But somehow, I just can’t. My mouth is too used to turning upward!

That's my 9 out of 999. Now it's your turn, my chosen blogbuddies:

1. Macoosh
2. Blondie
3. Cathy
4. Jase
5. Justin
6. CrimsonKing
7. Manhi
8. WolfBaby
9. AngelDust

Tell me just how weird you are! :p

Graffiti Goddess

I always thought you could never make me draw nor paint to save my life but Canadian Blog-art King Frank Sirianni changed all that.

Behold...my first ever attempt at graffiti artistry:

What do you think? Not too shabby? :p

Fabulous Frank's magnificently cool mission is to encourage all and sundry in blogging earth to unabashedly explore their inner artist and joyfully unleash their creativity on brick walls of canvas. He put up Foxxfyrre's Black and White Art Blog precisely for this awesome purpose.

Just choose your wall, beautify it to your heart's content and send it in. Frank will then post your wall on his site together with a link to you blog. As if this wasn't great enough, he will even go so far as to write a little something about your blog.

Like so:

Monday, October 23, 2006
GraffitiMyBlog Wall #23

I decided to do something a little different to review Irene's Blog called Pregnant Pauses.It is one thing to find a great blog by accident by clicking on a comment made in someone's blog to see who wrote those kind or witty words to the blogger they visited, but it is another to find someone's blog constantly refered to in actual posts. I've stumbled upon many blogs where Irene's Pregnant Pauses has been talked about, or directly linked to because the post she made on her own blog caught that blogger's attention. So to review Irene's blog, I thought what about doing a simple search on blogger to see what the phrase 'Irene Pregnant Pauses' would bring up. And how about five pages of hits to that search, and most are from blogposts that refer to Irene's blog from other blog authors....

....Irene's blog Pregnant Pauses is a genuine treat to visit, not only in her writing, but through her photography as well. Until visiting Irene's blog, I've always refered to a "Pregnant Pause" as being that uncomfortable long silence on the phone when you had just asked a government representative a simple question.

Please click on this to view the complete entry.

Thanks a lot, Frank! Not only for giving me such a good review, but for providing a unique venue for such fun and creativity!

So, dahling bloggerfriends, what are you waiting for?

Get thee to a mouse now and go vandalize a wall!

Love Hurts

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

- Neil Gaiman

Hailed by Queen Mimi

WOOHOO!

The marvelously magnificent Mimi Lenox did me the fabulous honor of featuring me for her latest Karaoke Blog.

If you still don't know who Mimi is yet, then wake the blog up!

Morphing Mimi is the renowned Queen of Blog Queens who cheerfully concocts creative inspirations to spark her readers' interests and delightfully discovers innovative means of strengthening cyber-ties between her bloggerfriends around the world. She is the enthusiastic pioneer behind Book Meme Central and Movie Meme Central which provide great avenues for shared ideas.

Mimi's most exicting brainchild to date is the Peace Globe Meme designed to foster harmony and unity among bloggers like you and me. If you haven't sent Mimi your signed globe yet, please click this now to show our bloggerfriend support in her noble cause.

Here is an excerpt from Mimi's Karaoke Blog feature on Pregnant Pauses:

Friday, October 20
Karaoke Blog ~ The Loony and Lovable Irene Tuazon

Before I even finished the intro to her blog - Pregnant Pauses - I knew Irene Tuazon possessed the "it" factor. Her writing is eloquent. Real. Warm. Intelligent. Happy.
Now, isn't that reason enough to visit a blog? Quite.
Until you meet the inspiration behind Miss Tourism herself.

Enter one world-class beautiful baby - aka The Babe Magnet - and lots of lovey-dovey smoochy-goochy warm fuzzies written about her photographer husband and their life together in the Philippines. The perfect recipe. She shares incredible personal photos with her readers; and I do mean incredible, folks, they're that good.

My favorite - still - involves said toddler child having a conversation with an animated spoon and standing in a large kettle. I was smitten.

Usually blogs have one or maybe two strong points that keep my attention. Everything about Irene's blog is first-rate. And what is the glue that holds all the smashing colors of her blogworld together? Her writing.

Brains do accompany this Filipino beauty. She recently answered a meme in typical zany fashion using pictures, causing an international hotflash to occur shen she posted this pic of Brazilian Reynaldo Gianecchini. Confessing that she is, indeed, shamelessly addicted to this gorgeous man, traffic has increased 500% just from silly girls revisiting to get a second peek. (I personally know this to be true).... And they said global warming couldn't be regulated....

Check out Mimi's post to read the rest of her wonderfully written article and to find out which "simply hysterical" post of mine she chose to rerun.

And as for my dear Mimi, all I can say is this:

Hope you don't faint from the heat.

BWAHAHA!

Give Me Five!

The very sweet, young and innocent Princess Shin of Malaysia finally cracked and gave up her chaste status as virgin-tagger with this meme. I am honored (and understandably pressured) to be part of her first ever tagging experience.

Are you ready? Dear Princess, I hope I will not disappoint.

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire:

Rejoice and be grateful!

Help my husband put up our dream super studio. If you build it, they will come!

Get to work on our fantasy house.

Construct a ginormous library and fill it to the brim with books. Ah, heaven!


Travel the world with my family…. and drop in on all my bloggerfriends in and every nook and cranny of the universe. Woohoo!


5 bad habits:

I am addicted to chocolate.


I am addicted to Reynaldo Gianecchini.

Women, can you blame me???

I am addicted to laughter.


BWAHAHAHA!

I am addicted to love.


I am addicted to blogging.


But so are YOU who are bothering to read this!

5 things I hate doing:

Admitting I’m wrong.

Losing my temper.


Crying.


Waiting.


Going away without my family.

5 things I would never do:

Sing in front of an audience.


Wear a bikini in public.

Become a vegetarian.


Split. (I'm just not that flexible!)

Stop writing.

5 things I regret doing:

I'll answer this by listing five insightful quotes on the subject.

"I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I'd just been myself."
- Brittany Renee

"Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don't take chances then you'll never have a winning hand, and I've no regrets."
- Bernard Cornwell

"The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits."
- Theodore Roosevelt

"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
- Arthur Miller

"Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success."
- Louisa May Alcott

5 favorite things:

My prized collection of albums and photographs.

My precious stash of letters and cards given by loved ones.


My husband’s gorgeous eyes.

My baby’s sweet hugs and kisses.


Happy smiles.


There's enough for everyone, including YOU!

5 people I choose to do this:

Alicia
Brian
Mysti
The Thinker
Dr. A

It’s your turn to give me five. Have fun!!!