Hong Kong Weekend

Now that we have Halloween behind us, its high time I posted some trip photos. Our first stop was a few days in Hong Kong.

We used miles to get first class tickets for absolutely no dollars and no cents - so that was sweet start to the journey.

Im totally spoiled rotten now - how will I ever suffer a long journey again without free pajamas?

We arrived in the late afternoon completely jet lagged. In an effort to force ourselves to stay away we took a cheesy nightime tour that included dinner at the famous floating restaurant.

Yes, you have to take a little ferry to get there. The restaurant is huge and one giant factory but the food was actually pretty tasty. We also visited the temple street night market and the mid levels but by that time I was barely keeping my eyes open no less taking coherent photographs.

We were up bright and early the next day to hit some of the more interesting markets that Hong Kong had in store for us. It should be noted that the HK public transport system is incredibly easy to use and extensive enough to get you to pretty much anywhere you want to go. Really impressed with it.



First stop the flower market where tiny shop after tiny shop had beautiful flowers for incredibly low prices. If I lived in Hong Kong, my house would forever be awash in floral scents.


Right next to the flower market is the bird park & market.

Locals will take their pet birds for a little stroll, hang their cage on a tree and chat up with their fellow bird lovers. Very interesting.

There were also plenty of things for sale as well. Most difficult to miss because of the racket of chirping are the millions of crickets everywhere. Uck!



I've never wanted to buy a bird cage more - they had a great selection in all shapes in sizes. Sadly, they wouldn't travel very well so I didn't buy one.

A few blocks away from there is a street they call the goldfish market but its really a general street that has loads of pet stores. Obviously, fish were the most popular type of pet.


We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city and of course grabbing some noodles.


The next day we made our way to Lantau to see the world's largest seated Buddha. (insert sarcastic oohing and ahhing here). We got an early start and decided to take the subway + cable car route vs. the ferry + bus route. Because we were so early, we got the cable car all to ourselves!




As you can imagine, I took loads of photos here. It was a great day even for the markedly less spiritual.




The final day in the city we did more wandering and shopping.




And finally saw the famous light show the city puts on each night.


Poof - our days in Hong Kong were over and there was a lot we never got to see. It was a great city and I hope we can make it back there again. We had no time to be wishful, it was time to pack it up and make our way back to the airport for our flight to Bali!

I see dead people.

Despite several unrelated emergencies on Friday that necesited some projects be cut from my to-do list, the party did in fact happen and I hope our guests had fun. As expected we had loads of trick or treaters and passserbys that got to enjoy the decorations too.



I don't go too overboard on the interior decor - I would have liked to do a bit more but ran out of time. I did a few little things like dress up the mirror, mask some of our paintings, light some candles and of course play some spooky music.

I serve mostly normal food but I made a few Halloween treats to sprinkle in the spread.


Witches fingers and eyeball caprese were borrowed ideas. Bloody panna clottas and blue blood punch were my own creations. I think everything looked and tasted pretty good but I have to be honest - not many were brave enough to eat them. Not sure why - maybe they were just too gruesome to eat? Yea, thats the ticket.

Finally it was time to race into our get ups. Then we had an impromptu photoshoot on the stoop.

As you can tell, we decided to go with a more conceptual costume this year than specific characters. While the result ended up looking like a cross between Sweeney Todd/Mrs.Lovett and the Thénardiers (the characters in Les Mis who sing Master of the House) - the plan was just to be a play on Victorian ghosts haunting the house. Whatever people thought we were, I was happy with how it all looked. Its always fun to dress up. Fun fact: We had our costumes made by someone on etsy.

I don't want to post photos of our guests out of respect for the privacy but we had some great characters join us including a family of swiss yodelers, a toddler disco king, michael meyers, snow white, a pirate, charlie brown & lucy and few other gems. But the stars of the show were definitely the hindu gods Ganesh and Kali.

As a result of the funny looking people inside our gate as well as the decor, our house was pretty popular with the kids and adults.

Some people even wanted to take photos with us and/or our guests.


The day went by in a flash. By the time the candles were burning low, everyone had come down off their sugar high and it was time to wrap it up. Til next year!


Now that Halloween is over, its time to start thinking about sugarplum fairies and jolly St. Nick!

Eek! Halloween 2009

Ok, so you've seen how the house looked Halloween. The giant spider was a big hit and Im sure we'll use that again but I wanted to do something different this year. We have an grade school nearby and the feedback we get from the kids is so encouraging - it really makes me want to go all out. So here is what it looks like now...






It could have probably used another skeleton or two but overall, I think the concept worked well. I'm not quite done - it needs a few more finishing touches but we've had monsoon like rains here this week and I'm running out of time.

The idea of the climbing skeleton didn't start with me. I found it here. But obviously we couldn't nail the skeletons into the stone without damaging our house so we used fishing wire at various points to hold them in position. Thankfully the storms this week didn't move them out of place (shocking!). We got the skeletons at Oriental Trading using as many coupons as a I could find, fishing wire from a bait & tackle shop (they looked at me really strangly when I told them I wanted to hang skeletons - it was august!), styrofoam skeleton heads from Michaeals (coupons!), little ravens from the 99 cents store, large raven from my halloween supply box.

So what do you think? Anything (quick and easy) I could add or tweak to make it better?

Where we went...

Thanks to everyone who played the guessing game about our last trip.

1,000 points each to From the Right Bank and Lime in the Coconut for correctly identifying Bali. (Anon correctly identified Hong Kong but since she didn't leave a name, I've got no one to credit)

As you can imagine, I have plenty to say about each location but I've run into a snag. I expected to have loads of photos to show you by now but I just haven't had time to go through just yet. With Halloween nearly here and me with zero free time lately, that isn't happening. So if you enjoy my travel posts, I hope you'll stick around until I have a chance to put one together.

Halloween Flashback: 2008

In case you didn't see it, I entered Paula Grace's Halloween contest for a bit of decorating help (I could really use a fresh set of eyes for inspiration). If you haven't already checked it out, please go take a look and vote for your favorite.

With that in mind, I thought it might be a good time to do a little bit of a flashback post to last Halloween for those that weren't readers at the time. For my long timers, feel free to just skip over the rest of this entirely.

A little time travel music, please. Poof - its Oct 31 2008.





As for exterior decorations, I went in a different direction this year. I'll be posting photos soon (just as soon as Im home in time to photograph it!) so keep an eye out.

Halloween Freebie: You got to coordinate!

Eek! Halloween is just a few days away now. For those party hostesses out there, I hoping you are much better prepared than I am. I have so much to do before Saturday. But who cares about that? Let's get to the freebie!

Don't get too excited - it's really just an add on to the Halloween Toe Tag invitation (below) I shared with you earlier this month.


For those that used this as their halloween invite, I edited it to create a smaller, simplier version. I think they would work nicely as favor tags, wine glass markers, napkin rings or anything else where a hang tag can do the job. Same deal as the invites - print, cut, thread with some string and enjoy. Here it is:


{Click here to download}

A note of thanks to the bloggers who featured this freebie: Creepy Cupcakes, Hot Pink Petticoat, Living Locurto, Moody Fashionista, Design Dazzle, The Magpie's Fancy and One Pretty Thing.
(if you have featured my invite and you're note here, please let me know)

The award for best feature goes to Paper Crane who printed the invites and photographed them beautifully too.


If you ended up using these for anything, I'd love to hear/see all about it. Otherwise, happy haunting. More Halloween posts coming this week.