Graveyard Pudding Cups

I might try this for my Halloween party at work. Seems pretty easy to make, though I don't know how many I should make, as it's hard to tell how many people will be coming.  From this website.

Oreos

Chocolate snack pudding cups

Ghost Peeps

Candy pumpkins

1.  Using a food processor or a rolling pin and ziploc bag, finely crush the Oreos.

2.  Open up the pudding cups and sprinkle the Oreo crumbs on top.

3.  Place a Peep ghost in each cup.

4.  Top each cup with a candy pumpkin.

Candy Corn Craze

Just like Pumpkin Spice, Candy Corn seems to find its way onto many things, including non-food items. See the slide show at this link.

There are even Candy Corn costumes, one made by the same company as the Pumpkin Spice one.  I'd briefly considered this one the year I bought the Pumpkin Spice one. Now It seems to be unavailable :(

I also found this variation on the candy corn costume:

And Candy Corn witch costumes:

Has the candy corn craze gotten out of hand?

Has the Pumpkin Spice Craze Gone Too Far?

Today at Dollar Tree, I spotted the following:

Now this too? I thought.

Just how far can the "pumpkin spice" craze go? See this link to see 20 such ways. I liked the Pumpkin Spice Costume as you can see in this post, but some of the other pumpkin spice things seem a bit weird.  I mean Pumpkin Spice Candy Corn? It's weird enough that candy corn has found its way into other holidays, but the standard yellow, orange and white candy is just fine for Halloween.  But body powder and fragrance mist? The pumpkin spice marshmallows sound like fun, though.  I now want to look for those.

When is Your Story Ready? ...And Other Questions

I'm still deciding whether to join The Insecure Support Writers Group. Today they are asking "When Do You Know When Your Story is Ready?" Here is the post on Stephanie Faris's blog.

This is what I have been asking myself lately. I still have some revising to do and have been having printer problems (long story!) I've gotten some feedback from those I've let read the pdf copy of my story.

One such person is a long-time family friend who thinks the story is too short for a book.  It's currently 87 pages. I now wonder how long it needs to be to become a book.  I recently posted a question to Yahoo Answers asking how many words are need for a memoir and two different responses as of yet said at least 60,000. I have yet to attempt a word count or even just estimate one.  Just how many pages does any typed manuscript have to be?  His other idea was perhaps a magazine article? But who will read that?

I'm waiting to hear from one of the ladies in my book club. She'd printed out the pdf, but the pages got out of order, so I asked her to let me have it so I could put them in the proper order. I then copied it to send to the friend mentioned above. He'd finished it sometime last week.  Others to whom I've e-mailed the pdf have yet to respond.

And all this time, I've been wondering how much longer I should be waiting to find an editor.  I have been working on this story since February.

Sounds Like a Good Idea, But...

Already the third day of October and I still haven't decided on a ID for this year.  But I do have some things in mind (more on that later).

Earlier this year, I came across this homemade costume. I briefly considered it, but I probably won't.

As you know from reading my blog, my one-year anniversary on Prozac has come and I am in the process of writing a depression memoir.  Somehow though, I don't think I want to do this. Will it be easy to wear while driving?  This is why I get hesistant about making costumes out of cardboard or papier mache or those with balloons, such as those below. A life size SpongeBob SquarePants costume--how does that sound? See this blogpost from 2011.  (NOTE: Unfortunately, the article linked in this post is no longer avaliable).

The bag of jelly beans and bunch of grapes costumes have always seemed like fun ideas, but how do you drive or do other things with these on?

Decided on One More Challenge for Next Year

As I said in this post, I am choosing to do offer my Literary Loners Reading Challenge again next year and will be doing two new ones: The Memoir Reading Bingo and the Epistolary Reading Challenge. I'd said even earlier that I didn't plan on hosting more than three challenges next tear, but when I was doing research for suggestions, I saw a great deal of memoirs and epistolary novels that fall into the category of humor.  I'd considered doing a humor reading challenge as well, and have come to a decision to do so. I've never seen one offered, so I think I should start one myself. Four challenges might seem like a lot, but there really is not much work involved in hosting a book challenge.

I'm still working on the Loners, Memoir and Epistolary challenge posts and hope to get them up by the end of October at the earliest. I will begin writing the post for the Humor challenge as well. Stay tuned.

Thursday Thoughts on Fall

 Yes, it's true.  Even though fall started a week ago, it's been hotter now that it was all summer.  I don't expect to put the shorts into seasonal retirement just yet, maybe not till later next month or even November.  

I don't drink coffee so I'm not sure what a pumpkin spice latte tastes like.  Not much for pumpkin pie either.  When I hear the phrase "pumpkin spice," I get reminded of a costume I bought and wore one year that bears that title:

The costume came with the pumpkin wig, the
orange dress and the fake books. I bought the
striped tights to add to it. The wig had a
pumpkin stem.

Most people who saw this didn't know what it was, but someone actually knew it was called 

"Pumpkin Spice." I was surprised by this.