Today is October first and this entire month is devoted to Halloween, the best holiday of the year! This year, we start out with a bright look into the last half of the best ride in Disneyworld: The Haunted Mansion! Haunted Mansion Backstage had these photos of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyworld. Here’s what they said about it:

Not exactly backstage, but here’s a cool lights-on peek near the end of the Graveyard scene after a ride stop and evacuation at the WDW Mansion. Every time I ride the Mansion I wish for this to happen to me! Ride stops, eventually lights come on and a CM has to escort us out. Please! :)

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, hauntedmansionbackstage: Not exactly backstage,…

I LOVE Halloween, so the blog entries for this month are going to be devoted to the lovely holiday!

In this town, we call home, everybody hail to the pumpkin song!

Life’s no fun without a good scare…

SecondWatch Blog found some Swatch knockoffs in Milan. Here is a Google Translation of their site:

Milan yesterday for me eye fell on three watches are very similar in form and packaging in the New Gent Swatch. The watches are very similar at first glance to New Gent and the box is almost identical in form. The sale price is 69,00 euro, a unique choice as “expensive”. The brand has seen fit to “imitate” in the form of our Swatch.

I have seen lots of watches that are borrowing from Swatch’s style, but I haven’t seen any that are trying to pass as Swatches, right down to the packaging. Why does Europe have all the cool stuff?!

There are some days that shine a little differently than others. I don’t know if it is caused by extra neurons firing in my brain or if the sun hits the world at a slightly different angle, but there are days that are just prettier than others.

Today is one of those days and the vision of a snail crossing the sidewalk on our walk back home from dropping the boy off at school was lovely to me.

Whether it’s misfiring neurons or the slant of a late summer sun in the morning, I don’t care. I’m just going to enjoy the beauty and wish for more moments like this.

I snapped this photo of a little boy wishing he could buy fireworks at the local fireworks trailer last year in Arco, ID. It was such a beautiful moment for me.

Watching him look at the fireworks so longingly reminded me of my childhood experience of the Fourth of July. My family was Jehovah Witness, so I wasn’t allowed to celebrate the birth of our nation. I felt a pathetic longing every time I heard the cracks and whistles of fireworks going on outside our house while I tried to sleep. I felt guilty every time I enjoyed seeing fireworks lit by other families on the street.

That little boy, hanging out at the fireworks trailer, wishing beyond hope that he could buy some represents EXACTLY how I felt every year during Independence Day.

I love this tutorial on how to make a patriotic cake:

You can see the full list of ingredients on the Lifehacker website:

• Lifehacker: How to Make an American Flag Cake for the 4th of July

Ingredients:

• Two vanilla cake mixes (although you might want to get a third just in case you screw something up or want to make a bigger cake), plus any ingredients those mixes call for. You can make the cake from scratch, but we tried it that way this year and it tasted like a sugary egg sponge. Using a mix is faster and it tasted much better to us.

• Two Three containers of vanilla frosting. Any standard-sized store brand will do. (You won’t need all the frosting in both containers, but you’ll need more than one.)

• One bottle of red food dye and one bottle of blue food dye. It’s a little troubling, but you’ll use it all up.

• 8″ or 9″ cake pans, depending on how much cake you’re going to get out of the cake mix you bought. (Most cake mixes can make two 9″ cakes, so you should be fine either way.)

• A 4″ cookie tin top (or anything that can cut an even 4″ circle out of cake).

I saw this last year and it made me want to make the cake, but I had seen it AFTER the fourth of July, so maybe this year!

I love this manicure from Nailside: 4th of July nails.

I did a similar manicure last year: Pick Me! » Patriotic Fingernails

The wind has been relentless the last few days. Whenever people ask me about Daybreak, they NEVER ask me about the wind.

They ask me about:

• The crime: it’s nonexistent.
• The Mormons: they are cliquish and omnipresent.
• The Daybreak activities: there were more of them a few years ago than now, but that’s not really a bad thing because karaoke night is NEVER a good thing.
• The commute to downtown SLC: It’s LONG and miserable.
• The supposed “ghetto” of Daybreak: If that’s a ghetto, then you have lived a very soft life.

But the WIND!

They never ask about the wind that will:

• Steal your BBQ cover, leaving it a quarter mile away, stuck in a neighbor’s tree.
• Hit your backyard with hurricane force micro-bursts that leave garbage all over your yard and rip panels out of your vinyl fencing.
• Knock over your yard umbrella, even though it is fed through your picnic table AND an umbrella stand.
• Relentlessly wear away at your trees, your hair and your will to live as you try to enjoy the outside, ride your bike or even take a simple walk around the lake.

Sometimes they ask about the Daybreak Stench. The wind DOES bring that smell about once a month. I had a commenter complain about it:

As a recent resident of daybreak I just got my first ‘whiff’ and it is APPALLING!! It is absolutely unacceptable and the public should be told about it so they can make an educated decision about the move here. That landfill needs to be shut down!! It can not be healthy and it is a ridiculous statement that you made to ‘stop whining’. Insist on a higher level of living. Become active on fixing the problem…don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. That’s just pathetic.

I find it interesting that the rich folk here in Daybreak think that the solution is to “shut down” the landfill. Where do they think their garbage goes? Apparently, they don’t want it to go in the county landfill. Do they think the neighborhood would smell better if each family had to deal with their own garbage? I wonder how they would like to have to burn, compost or bury their own waste in their own backyard.

As I said before, the Daybreak Stench doesn’t smell all that bad to me. It reminds me of a very happy childhood, just like the smell of a dead skunk on the side of the highway. So many people HATE the smell of a skunk, even if the animal died miles away, but at a certain distance, I’ve found that I like that smell.

I know I’m not SUPPOSED to like it.

I know that dead skunks and landfills are supposed to smell bad, but they don’t to me. This morning, the wind brought the Daybreak Stench into my open windows and I felt joyful. It reminded me of spring mornings in West Valley. It brought to my mind skateboarding on my orange, plastic skateboard all day long, around and around my block in Cherrywood. It made me smile.

I believe that ANY smell can be good or bad, depending on the memories that are attached to it. If you live a few years here in Daybreak and they are happy ones, then the Daybreak Stench will be a happy reminder of your time here. It will remind you of your early morning walks around the lake. It will bring to mind your happy bike rides along the trails, saying hi to the people you passed. It will remind you of the morning after a relentless wind when you finally found the right brick to put on your BBQ cover to keep it in place.

It’s like what William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Should you move to Daybreak? I don’t know. If you are an entitled elitist who believes that landfills should be closed down and insists on “a higher level of living,” then maybe this wonderful neighborhood isn’t for you. Go find another neighborhood and let a NICE person move here instead.

I love the story of Jane Eyre. Here is episode one of a modernized version of it:

The beginning doesn’t give you a good feel for the storytelling, so here is episode 2:

I’m so excited about this! It’s actually better than Sanditon (an unfinished Jane Austen novel) so far, but maybe Sanditon will get better. You can see the first episode of it here:

I’ve never read Sanditon, so that might be the difficulty I’m having with that series.

I like them both, though! Give ’em a watch!

I love these PBS remixes so much. They just make me cry.

Mr. Rogers was AWESOME!

I laughed my head off at this funny little prank. These guys dressed up like a secret society, complete with chanting monks, candles and a strange, presenting the tip ceremony and then called to order pizza. Hilarious!

Disturbingly Kawaii said:

See this is a prank. It’s fun, it’s funny, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and it gives the guy getting pranked a good story to tell with no skin off his back.

Via: Hank’s Tumblr: Guy stages a fake…

This video made me rethink everything I’ve thought about music and nostalgia.

Instead of listening to our individual music with headphones, we should be listening to our music together to create an identity as a family. I remember every morning listening to my New Wave music with my mom as we got ready every morning. It was really a bonding experience and I want to have that with Sean, so we need to banish the headphones and listen together, even if we have to listen to the Rainbow Connection over and over until I want to scream. In the end, it will remind me of this time when he is grown and gone.

Stacey and Dan bought me the BEST mini fingernail polish set last week! It’s called Life’s A Beach from Sephora. I immediately did a manicure the night they gave it to me because I loved all the colors. Mike talked me out of coloring a different color on each finger, despite the fact that they had conveniently given me TEN colors and TEN fingers to match. Instead, I took my favorites and made a manicure that I LOVE!

I used Havana Dreams for the base color. For the flower, I used It’s All About Me for the petals and IM Beauty for the center.

Here’s a closeup of the flower.

I had so much fun with this. I know this manicure will last about a week, but I’m so tempted to take it off to do another one with the colors from that mini kit!

Two months before he showed up on our doorstep, I watched this movie on Netflix: Happythankyoumoreplease

It’s one of those movies with WAY too many plot lines, but it was good. I did have a moment when I screamed at the television set, “Kids don’t just show up in your life like that!”

I am here to tell you now that yes, yes they do. And as of two weeks ago, we have full custody of an 11-year-old boy who just showed up on our doorstep in a strangely Dickensian manner.

I watched a video from Polish and Pearls the other day and was inspired to try one of my own. I did the rosebud manicure.

Here is a closeup of the rosebud:

I used the following polishes: (Continue Reading…)

Jenna Marbles made a great video about what she is awesome at and suggested that we all make that list and post it where we can see it every day.

This video is not safe for work, by the way.

I love how she finishes the video:

So make yourself a nice list and hang it somewhere you can remind yourself every day of something that you’re good at. So when that freakin’ boy is hangin’ out with Beth again, you’re startin’ to feel sad, just go to your list and go, like, “Oh, yeah! I make bangin’ grilled cheese samwiches. In your face, muthafugger! Ain’t nobody gonna bring me down!”

Man, I need to make that list for myself…

I just heard that Roger Ebert has died. This makes me sad. Here is the best speech I’ve ever seen from him.

So beautiful!

Here are my favorite quotes from Roger Ebert:

• The Quotations Page – Roger Ebert

I found this video of a cartoon by Disney called The Little House. I had seen it many times on television when I was a kid and even had the little record and story book for it.

The cartoon tells the story of the little house who originally lived in the country, but the city grew up around her.

Although the architecture and coloring is different, the houses are very similar.

Eventually, the city overtakes the neighborhood and The Little House finds herself surrounded by high rise buildings.

It very a similar story to the Up House.

In fact, in both stories, the house has been anthropomorphized as a female.

Both houses even fall into disrepair at some point in the story.

I think Up was such a powerful movie and so many of us were able to believe that the house was “Ellie” because we had seen The Little House as children. We had seen this story years and years before.

One of the first manicures I ever pinned on Pinterest was this one from normandlou:

• Lots of Dots – normandlou

I finally tried one on my own that looks awesome for spring.

Here is a close-up of one of the fingers.

For the base coat, I used On A Trip by Wet N Wild. It’s a lavender hue, even though it turned out almost blue in the photos.

For the dots, I used:

• I Need a Refresh-Mint by Wet N Wild
• OPI Flashbulb Fushia
• OPI On The Same Paige

I had a lot of fun doing this manicure and although it was twice the work of my Faux Nail Lingerie Manicure, I like it even better.

I love this video from Lancome about how to do eye makeup. For a girl like me, who LOVES makeup, but feels a little behind, videos like this are a godsend.

After I watched this video, I immediately thought that I couldn’t possibly do this without that fancy eye shadow from Lancome. The cheapest I could find it was for 38 bucks at Amazon, by the way.

• Lancome Color Design Eye Brightening All-in-one 5 Shadow & Liner Palette ~Midnight Rush~ at Amazon.com

The more I looked at the palette, however, the more I realized that I HAVE all those colors in my Sephora Makeup Kit, which ironically costs about the SAME as just one set of eyeshadow from Lancome. I can’t wait to try this out with my own eyeshadow!