This Is Halloween!!

Man, I sure LOOOVE Halloween. It's the only time I can walk out of the house without getting a lot of strange looks from bystanders. :/ Haters be hating. Besides Christmas, Halloween is the only Holiday that I spend the most money on. I take this Holiday very seriously and I don't mess around. I always ask for the day off at work because I need the whole day to get ready. People tease me that when I request Halloween off I put it as a religious Holiday, hey whatever works. :D

I love the atmosphere the Holiday brings and I love the feeling you get when you walk into a Halloween costume store or a Haunted House. I feel so alive during this time and I never want it to end. I always have a hard time trying to figure out what I should be but this time I was early. I was going to be a Zombie then I was going to be Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, then I was going to be a Zombie Nurse. Buuuutt I finally made my decision of what I'm going to be and it's not going to change since I already have my costume for it. I am going to be LADY GAGA!! :D

Everyone knows I'm a die hard fan of Lady Gaga just read my letter that I wrote for her titled "Why I adore Lady GaGa." I'm excited for this Halloween cause my costume is going to be wicked. With this post being about Halloween I wanted to post a little about the background of the Holiday.

HALLOWEEN

***Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31, which commonly includes activities such as trick-or-treating, attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.

HISTORY:

Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)". The name of the festival historically kept by the Gaels and celts in the British Isles which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end".

ORIGIN OF NAME:

The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556

SYMBOLS:
Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory. The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837[8] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.

The imagery of Halloween is derived from many sources, including national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein and Dracula), and classic horror films (such as Frankenstein and The Mummy). Among the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne in 1780, who made note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "Bogies" (ghosts), influencing Robert Burns' Halloween 1785. Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween.

Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, the occult, or mythical monsters. Black and orange are the holiday's traditional colors.

***Information from Wikipedia.com

Also every Monday I will be posting a spooky recipe that everyone can use at their Halloween parties. Today's Spooky recipe is Bleeding Heart Martini

"Keep up the fear factor with a Bleeding Heart martini, a drink with a pickled beet that "bleeds" from a would caused by a cocktail spear."

Ingredients:

2 ounces dry vermouth
8 ounces premium gin
Ice cubes
4 Pickled Baby Beets, each placed on a cocktail skewer

Directions:

1.Chill 4 martini glasses in the freezer or fill with ice water and let sit until frosty, about 5 minutes (pour out water). Add the vermouth, dividing evenly; swirl to coat the glasses, then pour out. Add gin to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously until chilled; divide among chilled glasses. Garnish each with a skewered pickled baby beet, and serve immediately.



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