Just Lauren

I dressed up as Squirrel Girl! I am so incredibly thrilled and proud. There have been many people I have wanted to dress up as but I usually become overwhelmed with the idea of finding all the pieces to create the outfit or I feel like I don’t have the money or I couldn’t do it exactly perfect so I end up not doing anything. But this year, I went for it and I am quite pleased with my first version of Squirrel Girl.

Could I make improvements to the costume? Definitely, and I look forward to doing so! But for gathering everything a week before Halloween, I am content.

Caramel apples, pumpkin and sweet potato gnocchi, Halloween trivia, friends, and Batman filled my weekend and I had a blast. Shari came over on Saturday and Sunday to hang out and celebrate Halloween with me and Elisabeth. I made homemade vegan caramel for us to dip Granny Smith apples in. I sliced up my apple based on this delicious video that my mom had shared with me a month or so ago (she and I are still gonna have to make caramel apples together!) and wow was that a great decision. It meant more caramel to apple ratio and who wouldn’t want that? I didn’t get as fancy as the video because 1. I ain’t got the time for that, I want to shove caramel apples in my mouth asap and 2. caramel apples don’t need to be that fancy, just give me some caramel and maybe some pecans and bam, it’s perfect.

After eating some super tasty apples, my meetup group had our Halloween zoom party. We showed off our costumes (Brittany went as Hugh Heffner and her boyfriend went as a Playboy bunny, it was very hilarious and they deserve a shout out) and we played the Halloween trivia game I had created. Elisabeth introduced me to Canva, a website where you can design a variety of things, through her tarot power point and as soon as I saw that I knew I wanted to design my own. Hence Halloween trivia was born. I spent hours on this power point, enjoying every minute of it, and I’m extremely proud of how it turned out. If you’re interested, or want to play trivia yourself, here it is!

Other highlights of my Halloween weekend:

Shari got into my t-rex costume and walked around as a dinosaur for a few minutes. Mostly to create a magical moment for a little girl that Elisabeth was video chatting with, but I’d like to think Shari was able to create a magical moment for herself as well because when you become a t-rex, you’re truly free to be goofy and alive. 😉 I will encourage each of you as often as I possibly can to get the costume yourself or try mine on next time we’re together!

Elisabeth dressed up as Gideon the Ninth, a book character she likes, earlier in the week, and she looked so badass that I loved her whole set up so much. She looked so different to me with face make up on!

We made sweet potato gnocchi for the first time and Shari made a cinnamon sugar icing for us to dip it in and holy moly this has changed my life. Elisabeth and I are definitely going to have to make this again, although as Shari pointed out, we wouldn’t have to make it as gnocchi next time but could make sweet potato pancakes instead and it would save us time. But the sweet potato and icing combo was just this amazing combination that melted in my mouth and tasted so delicious. This is what Halloween should always be like! Good food, fun costumes, and friends (and girlfriends). Now to just get rid of Daylight Savings time and I’ll be 100% content.