Tag Archives: Halloween

Makeshift Halloween Costumes (Year 2)!

When you grow out of your trick-or-treating years, Halloween is all about creativity and not spending much money on your costume.  As you may have read last year, us gals at LAQP like to do our own creations, so check out our “Makeshift Halloween Costumes 2011″!

Margo as “Anime Girl”
Wig:
Hollywood Wigs
6530 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 466-6479
Make-up: Basically just use a shit ton of liquid liner, white face paint and blue eyeshadow. Here’s a little tutorial video:

Clothes: The outfit was actual clothes Margo had in her closet and then she pinned a red ribbon pinned
to her shirt.

And there you have it!

Jess as “Poison Ivy”
Tights: $6  at random shop in the mall.
Dress: Free from roommate that no longer wanted to use it. Small alterations done to it to make it the correct length.
Boots: $3 at Salvation Army. Originally black and painted with green acrylic paint.
Gloves: $12 at Costume Shop. Originally white and painted with same green acrylic.
Ivy: $6/strand at Michael’s.

Brittany as “Finn the Human”
Hat: Boyfriend got at the Adventure Time panel at Comic-Con
Shirt: $2 Goodwill
Skirt: In her closet
Bookbag: Borrowed from Jess
Sword: $1 at the 99 Cent Store

BOOM!

Mel as “Vivian Ward”
Wig: Bought at a random party store
Jacket: She made with stuff she found at Goodwill
Skirt:
It’s A Wrap Production Wardrobe Sales
3315 W Magnolia Blvd
Burbank, CA 91505
(818) 567-7366
Boots & Jewelry: She owned

And that’s how you do Halloween, folks! Have an awesome homemade costume you would like to share? We would love to see them!

- LAQP

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DESERT FREEDOM (or DESSERT FREEDOM)

When 20 of your closest friends ask you to spend Halloween weekend in the secluded desert of Lucerne Valley, how could you possibly say no? Jess and Brittany (that’s us writing this) couldn’t! Ok, we said no to the overnight camping part because we had to get back to LA for Sunday morning obligations… BUT we spent all Saturday day shootin’ guns, drinkin’ Bud Light, eatin’ Halloween candy (hence DESSERT FREEDOM), climbing rocks, rocket launching, and taking bathroom breaks wherever we pleased. All while the only sounds we could hear were the light breeze and our friends riding dirt bikes in the distance.

It’s kind of hard to describe how truly incredible it is, it’s something you just have to experience yourself. Especially when you live in the hustle and bustle of a city such as LA. Where traffic, loud noises, and people everywhere become everyday life. It’s so wonderful to just get away from it all. And to really get away from civilization. We now fully understand the concept of a hippie commune and secretly wish we could be a part of one. Are those still around? Please e-mail us if you know of one ;-)

At first, we got a bit lost….

"This doesn't look right..."

But then we made it!!!!

The endless desert. Just how we like it.

Jess... The newest shooter of skeet

Action shot of an awesome surprise rocket launching.

Looking around and seeing your friends everywhere is the best feeling.

Oh, did we mention that our friends are wilderness geniuses and built their own zipline?

We want to send a special shout out to our awesome friend Gabe who put the whole shindig together. You the man! Sorry we missed out on the movies projected on the rocks and your dj’ing skillz. NEXT TIME.

The man, the myth, the devil.

This post is dedicated to getting out of the busy life and just sitting back with your good friends and looking at the stars. I’m talking REAL stars. Not the ones you just see in Hollywood.

- J & Britt

This is a REAL poloroid, folks. Thanks, Jordy!

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Love Manor

Ghouls and goblins, lend me your ears, as I tell you the story of all your Halloween fears.

Love Manor held there annual Halloween party this past Saturday and it was nothing short of excellent.  Live swing jazz band, devilish treats, sinister cocktails, and the scene to the perfect haunted house.  With all the spooks and scares there was only one group that could have kept us safe… The Southern California Ghostbusters!

You can check out Love Manor’s invite/website here  and here .

We couldn’t have gotten to this spooktacular fest without proper transportation. And such a party requires nothing but the best. PARTY BUS!!!!  Strobe lights!  Slippery wood floors! Stripper pole! Champagne! Buck Range Light (generic beer?!)!  AMAZINGNESS.  (outside of our driver trying to swindle an extra tip from us)

Lets just say that this weekend was definitely one for the horror books.

amazing set dressing

love the decor!

love manor

classic

The Southern California Ghostbusters

Johnny Love....love manor

xoxo,

mel

(pictures courtesy of Dana and Megan)

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Halloween With A Cheese Factor

Halloween time is a favorite among the LAQPs and we all love our share of shrieks and screams. But as with my love for all  cheesy 80s movies I have a soft spot for cheesy Halloween places.

This past weekend some of my pals and I headed over to the Toluca Lake pumpkin patch. It had a haunted maze and a petting zoo too! Good thing we had a one year old with us so we didn’t all look like weirdos. The place isn’t very big and I wouldn’t exactly call it a “haunted maze”. We did have fun taking lots of pictures and successfully naming all the farm animals with very prestigious names.

It’s a good place for kids and to indulge in the cheese factor. It’s definitely a representation of an L.A. Halloween. Which, as us transplants know, isn’t a really fall or real Halloween season.

Check it out at:

10601 Riverside Drive (corner with Cahuenga)

Toluca Lake-North Hollywood CA 91602

(818)-505-8039

Admission is $6.

And check out our pictures!

 

Christine w/ King Chesterton! 

No joke, this cat was getting glamour shots taken near the pumpkins. He had a leash on so it was cool. 

And one Instagram’d shot of the Patch.

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October!

October!! One of my favorite months of the year. I love everything about it and whenever I do end up getting hitched it’ll be in a pumpkin patch in the MidWest.

In Chicago it’s because the leaves changed colors and I could stomp and crunch them under my feet. The air finally cooled off from the humidity of summer. Not to mention the month caps off with the best holiday of them all – HALLOWEEN!

Since moving to L.A. I haven’t lost my love of the month that includes all things orange but I have lost crisp, cool air, leaves changing and planning my Halloween costume according to the weather. We will get at most a week of “fall”weather. That’s not nearly enough to quench my needs!

Here’s a list of things that I can still do while in L.A. to get me in the spirit:

1) Halloween Horror Nights at Universal (check out a detailed blog about this a few posts below from Britt!)

2) Six Flags Magic Mountain – if you haven’t been to Magic Mountain and live in L.A. It’s a must! Not only do I think it’s much better than the one in Chicago but like all other Six Flags it does have a Fright Fest. We’re planning on going to this sometime this month so I will be sure to post a detailed blog!

3) Netflix Instant put up TONS and I mean TONS of old and silly horror movies. I snuggled up tonight with the cool-ish 70 degree weather gently blowing my window shades and watched a few. Guys – Troll 2 is on there. CMON!

4) Halloween Stores – Who would think that L.A. would even need Halloween stores with the way this town operates. But you’d be hard pressed to find a main city block that doesn’t have a Halloween store. Andrew and I stumbled upon a retty spectacular one over in Burbank called Halloween Town. It’s got two floors and your regular buy-a-costumes but it also has a slew of decorations that blew my mind. It’s a fully themed store and almost feels like you are stepping into a haunted house. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Halloween Town

2921 Magnolia Blvd.

Burbank, 91505

http://www.halloweentownstore.com

5) Decorating the apartment – It’s time to wander into the garage and dig up my boxes of Halloween Decor. I mean it’s already the 3rd and I’ve yet to do this because of work. It’ll be done sometime this week and I can’t wait to spend the month surrounded by orange and black paraphenalia.

6) Planning a Halloween costume and then finding where to celebrate – Normally I start planning and making my costumes in June but this summer got away from me and I’m just not thinking about what to do for it. More to come on that. I also haven’t quite locked in my day of plans yet and for those of you like me and want something more than a house party look no further than the West Hollywood Halloween Carnavale. I have yet to experience this amazing experience but hear the most glorious things about it.It takes place on the actual night and Santa Monica Blvd is full of people in costume having a wonderful time.

7) Carve Pumpkins – It’s an age old tale. I never tire of the chance to hack open a pumpkin and let it rot outside my apartment over the next month. I love caving pumpkins. I love remembering the knives my mom and dad used to make us use to carve them. You know, the small handled orange serrated knives with pumpkins on it? They couldn’t cut into a block of cheese let alone a pumpkin but they still made me smile. Last year, the girls and I carved some pumpkins and set them out into the hallway of our complex for the whole building to enjoy. Well at the end of the month the hallway reeked of butthole and our neighbors were no longer in the spirit of things. And this year, you can bet we’ll carve some more and see ‘em rot!

8  )  Last but certainly not least (I may update and add to this list as the month goes on) – Fall beers! Who honestly doesn’t love a fall beer? I love beer and I love fall so it’s basically a party in my mouth. Now other than your basic shelf Oktoberfests and Pumkin Ale’s that can be found at all stores. A lot of restaurants have their own installments of fall beers. Andrew and I were recently at the Red Lion Tavern and were able to sit on the roof with the heaters and enjoy their version of the Oktoberfest. It was nothing short of delicious. My tastebuds collapsed into a fall-induced coma. I highly recommended hitting up the Red Lion to try their Oktoberfest.

2366 glendale blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90039
(323) 662-5337

I also know BJ’s has an apple cider and an Oktoberfest. I have yet to try either but hear some good things about it.

That’s all for now folks. For all those MidWest readers, writing this made my heart ache with miss, so inhale some cool air for me and crunch a few leaves under your boots!

– J

P.S. – Here’s a picture of Britt and I on our first Halloween in L.A.

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Baby Gaga

ABSOLUTELY PHENOMINAL

Thank you to our very own Queen Pin Margo Murphy for finding this obscenely impressive baby Halloween costume.  I’m thinking about getting one for Baby Keaton…

LUV,
Britt

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Halloween Horror Nights! SPOOKY!

If you don’t know already, my wonderful boyfriend works at Universal Studios Hollywood.  This is awesome because that means he gets discount tickets not only to the Universal park, but also Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, etc. and the employees are usually the first people to try out all the new attractions at the park.  And since my boyfriend is awesome, I’m always his plus one for such events.  A few months ago we were some of the first people to ever ride the new King Kong 3-D and last night we got to experience Halloween Horror Nights for FREE!  Woo!

Now, I have a very warped mind when it comes to horror movies.  When I was little, I was so scared by the Chucky movies that I believed Johnny Depp lived under my bed and protected me from the murderous doll (ummm, I was a VERY strange child.  And completely in love with Johnny Depp.  I used to watch Cry Baby on repeat. I’m not even lying).  When I was around 12, I was introduced to Psycho (the classic, not the shit re-make) and it terrified me as well.  And don’t even get me started on how Tales from the Crypt, Pet Cemetary, and Hellraiser effected my youth.  For some reason I loved being scared.  I loved the adrenaline it caused.  I hated the not being able to sleep and night terrors that I got from it…  Worth it?  YES.

Still to this day I love haunted houses because they completely terrify me.  It’s not the blood and guts spewed all over the place that freaks me out.  It’s the unknown.  Not knowing when someone is going to jump out at you at any time.  They get so close to you with a chain saw or knife and you have no idea how they don’t touch/cut you.  Seriously, those people get major kudos from me.  I would be the one worker that accidentally cut a park guests arm off.  “Oops!  Hope you are left-handed!”

Our first stop was of course the “Terror Tram” which is basically the studio tour but instead of actually riding the tram you walk  and all of the usual tour attractions have been transformed into gruesome and horrifying scenes!  Oh my!  And OF COURSE Chucky is your guide! OF COURSE!

Universal has five different “mazes” this year:

1) Saw – Game On:  Super fun and creepy!  And LONG!  It takes you through the most grisly scenes from the Saw films and beware of the smells!  Never have I been in a haunted house that used smellovision!  At first I just thought someone seriously took a poo somewhere as a joke, but then realized the smells changed as we entered each room and connected with what we were seeing.  Impressive!

2) Rob Zombie’s House of a 1,000 Corpses in 3-D Zombievision:  Equally as awesome.  House of 1,000 Corpses is one of my favorite scary films, so it was fun walking through the scenes from the movies.  They give you 3-D glasses to wear through, but I took mine off because it was distracting and I couldn’t tell what was real and fake and it was really freaking me out…

3) Vampyre – Castle of the Undead: Also fun!  Not as scary as the previous two, but still good.

4) Friday the 13th – Kill, Jason, Kill!: Didn’t make it to this one :-(

5) Nightmare on Elm Street – Never Sleep Again: Didn’t make it to this one :-(

They also have a show called Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure.  That was for sure a waste of 45 minutes of my life and free trip to the park.  Halfway through I looked over at Bryan and said “What the hell are we watching?!”  It was like a mixture between Glee, one of those awful comedy movies that make fun of anything pop culture related (example: Epic Movie, Dance Movie, etc…), and an MTV show.  I mean, if you complete everything else in the park, I would suggest going, but if not, please don’t waste your time.

All-in-all, I had a really great time!  It helped that it was free, but I think it would be great to get a big group of people together, drink some adult beverages (except for the driver, of course!) and head out to Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights 2010 to get in the mood for the spooky season ahead :-)

LUV,
Britt

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How to Live in LA

Last week I celebrated my official 2 year anniversary of living in LA.  Instead of writing some uber sappy blog about it, I decided to share the last two years in pictures.  Because honestly, would you rather READ a blog or LOOK at pictures?  Also, I will give you a few ideas on how to survive here, some fun things you should check out if you live here or are visiting, and also what people in LA need to act like.  Let’s begin:

1. Strap a U-Haul on your tiny car and move to California!

2. Get your first apartment in LA! YAY!

3. Get a job working at a studio. Like Warner Bros...

Or Disney!

4. Watch Matthew Mcconaughey shower

5. Go to El Matador Beach...

And see Pierce Brosnan there

6. Go see Point Break LIVE!

7. Go to the MTV Movie Awards

8. Take posey pictures at the MTV Movie Awards

9. Take pictures with Whitney Port at the MTV Movie Awards

10. Celebrate Thanksgiving

11. Celebrate Christmas

12. Celebrate New Years

13. Celebrate Easter

14. Celebrate the 4th of July

15. Celebrate Halloween

16. Celebrate your friends birthday with a Franchise Bar Crawl

17. Celebrate an LAQP's Birthday with a Bar Golf Theme

18. Celebrate your friends birthday with moustaches

19. Celebrate another LAQP's birthday by going to San Diego

Do some snorkeling while you are there (WARNING: The water is flipping FREEZING!)

And don't forget to visit the Sea Lions!

20. Get a limo in honor of your friends birthday *Random Fact: Did you know it cost about $300 extra if you barf in a limo? Just something to think about...

21. Celebrate E!'s birthday

22. Hike up to the Griffith Observatory

23. Meet the man of your dreams and drive up to the Griffith Observatory

24. Hike up to the Hollywood sign

25. TRAVEL! Go to Yosemite

Go to San Fran

Go to Temecula

Go to Pioneertown

Go visit the dino's in Cabazon

26. Go to the La Brea Tar Pits

27. Go to a carnival and pop enough balloons to win a picture of MJ

28. Go to the Getty Center

29. Go to the Getty Villa

30. Go see a New York sunrise

31. Go to Newport Beach

32. Get on a movie set (Remember Me)

33. Work on a movie set (Imbalance)

34. Get on the Red Carpet

35. Go to Universal Studios and ride Jurassic Park (And take pics w/ Tom Hanks *swoon*)

36. Go to The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Nothing like the Jurassic Park Ride)

37. Go to Bootie LA

38. Throw an 80's Party

39. Throw a Fancy Dress Christmas Party (It helps to make up a dance to perform in front of your guests)

40. HELP YOUR FRIENDS OUT!

Basically, the last two years have been full of amazing opportunites, fantastic people, and GOOD TIMES.  I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now.  So, live your dreams people.  Go out and do new things.  Don’t be afraid of failing because there are a million people that don’t even TRY to do anything new.  And believe me, if I haven’t failed yet (and I use “yet” loosely) you FOR SURE won’t!

LUV,

Britt

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