A Matter of Choice

Love it or hate it even in Cyprus where it's not widely acknowledged you can't avoid the fact it's Halloween, so it's no surprise that this weeks Gallery theme is 'Frightful'  It didn't take me long to figure out what photo to dig out the archives... Meet Scary Clown, aka my husband in his favourite fancy dress costume of all time!  This was his outfit of choice on a adult party weekend at Butlins several years ago. I tried to disown him for the night but as much as we tried we couldn't lose him even in a packed nightclub, you could always tell where he was by the screams coming from random people as they ran away!   

I wasn't planning on joining in with the Gallery this week, figuring I'd be a little busy, but last Friday just as I was preparing to go into hospital for my induction I spotted the theme for this week...... Movies.    Well, when you get engaged at a production of the brilliant production of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and then several years later actually get to picnic at the site the film was shot it just has to be done. Aaron and I have been Rocky fans for a long time and when I realised that the fan club held an annual picnic at Oakley Court Hotel in Windsor on August bank holiday which just happens to fall on the weekend after our wedding anniversary we couldn't resist getting ourselves some tickets. "Over at the Frankenstein Place" It was a brilliant, if not slightly surreal weekend. Full of fans of all ages enjoying the sunshine, food and of course the fact that we were at Oakley Court! There was an extra surprise when the Richar...

As you may know Aaron and I are HUGE fancy dress fans, we've annoyed many of our friends in the past by instigating fancy dress parties (often for no reason at all!)  or convincing everyone to go out dressed in random outfits.  From getting engaged in costume to some fantastic parties  and weekends away   we never like to pass up a chance to dress up! Back in the UK we had amassed a huge collection of costumes but unfortunately decided get rid of them all before moving out to Cyprus. To be fair we've not has much of an opportunity to wear any of them but it's much harder to get hold of things to make outfits here.    So I was really excited when I was offered an outfit from All Fancy Dress.com, I eagerly surfed my way through my favourite types of costumes - (Fairytale, Burlesque, Greek Goddess etc)  and then realised I no longer had anywhere to wear it! So, instead I headed to the children's section (after convincin...

As mentioned before our family have a huge love of books and we have passed this onto Leo, like his toys his favourites vary from day to day but a some he always comes back to are the classic Mr Men series.  He can name nearly all of them and as well as reading them he likes to spend time looking at them all and arranging them all over the place, I think he's so impressed that he now owns so many of them! I then remembered that his first ever fancy dress costume when he was 9 months old happened to be a Mr Man, long before he had any idea who they were.   It was brought at the last minute from the only place I could find here to sell them and it was one of a choice of two outfits. It was also for a 5 year old to be worn as a top with red trousers but it was that or nothing so we gave it a shot! These days although Mr Noisy certainly suits him a lot of the time,  I'm sure he'd protest and want to be a different one, currently his favour...

Back in the good ol'days we went through a bit of a second childhood!  It all started with my hen weekend when 8 of my friends and I went to Butlins for a 'School disco' weekend  and ended up with five separate trips in just two years! They were quite simply the best weekends of all time! Friends, fancy dress, dancing, drinking and lots and lots of laughter. There was something about the place that made you regress to childhood - maybe it was all the flashing lights on the arcade machines! From the Friday when we arrived until the Monday when we left it was like being in a different world - a world that was often very surreal! Aaron and I, as we do went to great efforts to persuade everyone to dress up, at least on the Saturday night. Over the various trips we have been school kids on several occasions (the simplest and one of the most fun, especially when there are 8 of you dressed like it!), Superheroes, and other random and quite bril...

Living in Cyprus I am very pleased to avoid most of the 'Halloween hype' as I'm not really a fan of 'trick or treating' having never done it as a child and more importantly spending years in the UK trying to avoid the older kids who were only interested in collecting money or 'tricking' (ie destroying stuff), that said it may sound hypocritical but I don't dislike Halloween at all,  after all - a reason to party and to dress up, what's not to love! Last year I went to my first ever Halloween party, at my friend and fellow party/fancy dress fan Sam's. Halloween is Sam's 'thing' and this year she hosted her now annual Halloween party. (Sorry Sam, we'll be back next year,like it or not!)  Sam had done a fantastic job with the decorations, all home-made (you tend not to see Halloween things in the shops here) and everyone brought a contribution to the food table.  Aaron and I had made a Ghost Cake  and I also made Monster Eyeballs...

What a busy birthday week it's been.... I had a nice birthday 'day' which was mainly filled with cake! It started off with toddler group to which I took fairy cakes, followed by a lovely home-made cake from my Mum and then the arrival of my friend with an armful of doughnuts. In the evening, my lovely parents babysat and paid for us to go for a meal, we tried a new restaurant which had been recommended to us and had a lovely time.  Last week I looked back over my childhood birthdays , and on the day itself my Mum wrote about my actual birth day  so this week I thought I'd share some memories of a couple in between! I love any excuse for a celebration and birthdays are a VERY good one so I've had some outstanding (usually) drunken celebrations. From my 18th birthday party  where I tried to punch Aaron (and missed!) for getting me a stripper after I had made him promise not to, to a alcohol free weekend on the canal when I was pregnant I have ma...

It's no secret that we love our parties, and especially the fancy dress ones... Four years ago we had what is alternately referred to as the best and worst party we have ever had  After a couple of very successful parties in a hired hall in a local hotel we decided to pull out all the stops for a birthday party for Aaron. We decided it HAD to be fancy dress and decided to give it a theme. Heaven & Hell The cake So much had been said about the previous parties amongst our crowd of friends at the time that we thought it would be huge, we hired a bigger room, got a DJ and made a ton of food.... Unfortunately along with the fact the some of our 'friends' can be a bit fickle and don't always do what they say they will, the day of the party was the day England got knocked out of the world cup. From the moment we lost the phone did not stop ringing with people telling us they were not coming as they were too depressed/drunk in a pub too far...

This week I'm taking you back to 1997, the year I discovered that I LOVE fancy dress! Before this I hated dressing up, I'd never know what to wear, and would worry that I would look stupid, but then I met AJ... the biggest fan of dressing up ever! In 1997 we were invited to am 18th birthday party in a local hotel, we didn't actually know the birthday girl, she was a friend of a friend but it was a big hall and we were making up the numbers! AJ was very excited but I was somewhat less than enthusiastic, we had big debates what to wear and he asked me what I would most like to wear if I could choose anything. That was an easy question, a wedding dress! Well it just so happens that his Mum makes wedding dresses for a living and she had a dress that she had made for a Bridal fair, and it was black and white. From this the plan for my costume came to life. I was to be "Bride of Dracula"  (Yes, I realise that it should be "Bride of Frankenstein" but AJ w...

There is a possibility that some in  my situation would find this weeks Gallery prompt a little tricky.  Given that I have recently blogged about my wedding , Leo's Christening,  and my birthday , not to mention a whole year in Cyprus  and Leo's birthday , you would be forgiven for thinking that I'd run out of celebrations to write about. This is me though and for those that know AJ and I, you will know that we never need a reason to celebrate. I have been going through old photos - (a most enjoyable pastime of mine!) and have still managed to change my mind several times. I've still got so many to choose from so I thought I'd go festive. This was taken on Christmas Eve back in 2005. A group of us, pre-babies had decided to go out in our local town and thought we'd dress up just for the hell of it! Note that AJ (the biggest fancy dress fan EVER) still manages to be different!) We certainly made an entrance as we all walked into the pub..... ...

Happy Halloween to you all! Yesterday AJ and I took Leo to his first Halloween party. It was a kids party but us being us decided it would be rude not to get dressed up too, any excuse! The party went off very well, there was relatively little destruction and no tears that I can remember, not a mean feat when you consider most of the children there are about 2! The food was great, everyone contributed something and it was all yummy. We took a pumpkin cake, a joint effort between the two of us, I made the cake, AJ decorated it. It also means I get to cross another item off my  101 in 1001 list

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey...... On my birthday in 2003 a small group of us went to see  The Rocky Horror Show . Just before the show started this is what happened..... He had "the ring to prove that he's no joker" Yep, this is the moment where AJ got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! We now have a long running love affair with The Rocky Horror Show, we have seen it many times and even (to my Mum's initial bemusement) named the tables at our wedding reception after Rocky Characters. Our Rocky Fan friends were the "Riff Raff" at the back! We thought about having the Timewarp as our first dance but we decided against it. It didn't stop us later in the evening though. For AJ's birthday in 2008 we went to  Oakley Court Hotel  in Windsor. This is where the film was shot and where the  Official UK RHS fan club  holds an annual picnic. Didn't we pass a castle a few miles back? We went not really k...

Ah, another year older... Two weeks ago I celebrated my 33rd birthday, even though a couple of months ago I had been convinced that I was coming up to my 32nd  (I blame being pregnant and not drinking on my 31st, I think maybe that meant it didn't count as a birthday!) I always like to celebrate a birthday in style....so along with a few friends we decided to go out on the town in Agia Napa. Being "Napa" we thought it would be fun to dress up just to help the celebrations along.  Three of the the party girls! We started off in a karaoke pub, Sam (the one in purple) is a HUGE karaoke fan and is a bloody good singer. I couldn't even tell you how many times she got up to sing, and that's through losing count as opposed to too much beer. I on the other hand would love karaoke if I could sing....or was quite drunk....... Sorry Mum, drinking pints again! Oops! I  ruined  sang "Like a Prayer" by Madonna. Spurred on by that succes...