Halloweenie

Little Leila as a Witch!

I couldn’t imagine the fall season passing by without the joys of Halloween. As a kid every year for Halloween my neighborhood would have all the costumed kids start at one end of our main street and we would parade, with the high school marching band leading the way, to a party house.  Once we reached the party house there’d be food and festivities – bobbing for apples, hot apple cider, pumpkin carving. It was some of the best memories of my life. My mother would make all our costumes from scratch and we spent just as much time as a family, carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating as we did with any other holiday.

It bugs me, personally, when people prevent their kids from partaking in the dress up, fantasy and family time that IS Halloween. I understand some people do it for religious reasons, which I find a little ridiculous. Halloween is in no way a religious holiday I think the closest it has to being religious is All Saints Day and Day of the Dead. Both are rooted in Catholicism, not “Satan worshiping.” Halloween is in no way a devil-worshipping, sacrificial, bringing the dead to life celebration. It’s rooted in a million myths and beliefs but it is not a religious holiday. While were on it, technically, neither is Thanksgiving. Think about it you think the Native Americans who joined in that meal understood who the pale skins god was? No? Thanksgiving to me is a time to come together and be grateful for one another, not necessary to be thankful to an almighty entity.

No one said you have to join in the haunted houses mayhem that is plentiful during the celebration. Carve happy faces in your pumpkin instead of a scary one.  I understand if you want to keep your kids away from the terrifying parts of Halloween, sure. Then do that, but there is no reason you have to cut out the fun holiday fully. If your child wants to spend time with her friends and dress up as a princess, is that wrong? Isn’t that what she does during her imaginary tea parties? Except on this day she can go out and be rewarded for her fantastical costume and adorableness.  I had friends as a kid who had diabetes and they would go trick or treating and sell their candy to their parents – Ha!

Our carvings 2011

Bottom line: I am in love with Halloween it has always been a time of the year where the temperature cools and family time begins (next in line – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all big family celebrations). Halloween is a celebration of harvesting and ushering in the winter. It’s when the leaves change colors and you can wear that awesome scarf again. Whenever my husband and I have kids, you better believe if they come to me with their big beautiful eyes and ask me if they could please be a fairy for  Halloween and go trick-or-treating, I will buy a sewing machine and get on it. I will not push Halloween on my children. I don’t think any of our lifestyles should be pushed on our children. If I, as a meat eater, discover my child doesn’t like meat, guess what? I’m not going to tell them they can’t leave the table until they eat their meat. If Halloween scares my child I will not force them to participate. But if my child comes to me excited and sees and grows from my Halloween enthusiasm, I’m running out and buying more pumpkins.

Sleek Geek Shopping

The holidays are upon us and I don’t mean Christmas. Halloween is the best time for nerds you’re allowed to display your zombie, vampire, werewolf, Star Trek, Star Wars, comic book memorabilia without judgment.  But shopping for nerd stuff doesn’t begin or end with Halloween. You can add nerd needs to a wedding registry on registries like myregistery.com (www.myregistry.com) you can add ANYTHING it doesn’t have to be shop specific like a Macy, Target or Crate & Barrel registry. There are two geek fantastic sites I’d like to discuss – Geek Chic and Think Geek.  These are two places that I use and are tried and true (besides Etsy, my first love).

Geek Chic  (www.geekchichq.com) is not what you think it is. They are a furniture company made for gamers. Whether your game is D & D, Xbox, Play Station, Risk, puzzles, scrabble or anything else. Their tables, desks, and chairs are handmade works of art. They are as functional as they are beautiful. As a wedding gift to us my husband and I bought their Hoplite table as a coffee table. We eyed this furniture for awhile. They are a pretty penny. We saw them first at the 2010 Emerald City Comicon, being that they’re a local company based in Everett, why wouldn’t they be there?  It wasn’t until 2011’s Emerald City Comicon that we went ahead and put our names down on the waiting list. Yes there is a waiting list and a deposit required when you decide to purchase one of these magnificent wooden alters of nerdisism.  We’ve been in the queue for our table since Mach 2011 we were informed in July that our table is being moved up the queue to verification/manufacturing. It’s worth waiting for, trust me.  Now we’re waiting to hear from our Logistics Liaison and the delivery team to have our golden table of geekdom brought to us.  They will customize your table to your needs. Do you want a velvet inlay? A washable/writable inlay? Drawers that offer cushioned, custom controller holders for your XBOX or Playstation? They have whatever you can imagine and if they don’t they’ll make it for you. 

Think Geek (www.thinkgeek.com) is where I go when I need a nerd fix, whether that fix is Star Wars Rebel Alliance headphones or  a Star Trek Pizza cutter, they have whaterver you need to spruce up your home, make your life easier and decorate your body. We put a lot of items from Thin Geek on our Wedding Registry – Salt and Pepper grenade shakers, MagnoGrip (magnetic wristband holds nails, screws, etc) and our friends even took the initiative and got us things from there not on our registry, like the large yard zombie.  They have books, tools, apparel, home & office, gadgets, geek toys, edibles and computer stuff. Whatever your little nerdy heart desires.

So think outside of the box with your wedding registry, Christmas gifts, Halloween decorations and celebrations. Raise you nerd flag and take your geek out for a walk. Don’t be afraid.

Live Long and Prosper

That's kind of the motto for every wedding right? Or, it should be. Live long with your soul mate and prosper. Whether prosper means spitting out 12 kids or getting rich and famous or having an enriching life with your loved one. Either way, Live Long and Prosper my friends and Stay Thirsty. No, wait. That's something else.

Anyways if you're a Trekkie (like me) you might want your wedding to reflect that . How about Star Trek Bridesmaid dresses or instead of bouquets they carry phaser guns? All the groomsmen are carrying communicators and you have a Klingon conducting the ceremony. Ah, yes, that would be awesome. So where to begin for planning your Star Trek wedding, like this?

Taken from www.GeekSugar.com

For starters, there's a great Trekkie site called RoddenBerry (www.roddenberry.com). This site allows you to buy everything from phasers to dresses. If you want a more hands on approach, they sell patterns. Prop replicas, prop kits, blueprints for the TOS stage, even gift ideas they have pretty much whatever Star Trek fare you're into.

If you want to make your own wedding cake, here's a video on how to make a pretty sweet one.

There are a million sites you can go to for Star Trek gifts, cake toppers, cuff links even garter belts – Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Think Geek. Really, any of them will do. But I wouldn't dig too deep. A lot of things can be done by you or with friends. You don't have to necessarily buy it. Ideas are great, implication is hard.

Shop Kizette: For the Love of Geek.... on Etsy.com

I personally, love Star Trek I would have loved to have that theme in my wedding, but my loss is your gain.  Here are some helpful hints to get the planning started. I know what you're think, I just can't do it, I don't have the power. But you're wrong, Scotty. You can do it. The internet is the final frontier... Okay, not really but it can seem that way when you're navigating treacherous sites, soul sucking stupidity and not finding an inkling of what you are looking for, instead you get side tracked and forgotten. Well, here's a place to start. Now stay focused my friend.

"What you WANT is irrelevant, what you've CHOSEN is at hand." - Spock

Nerdgasm

When it came to planning for our wedding, I looked up a lot of nerd stuff. My go-to for hilarity and even sometimes ideas was wedinator.com. For instance it was on that site that I saw this creative online wedding invitation  

and that I found this awesome wedding cake 

But also, when the stress got to me it calmed with images like this.

It was only after goofing around and trying to wade through the nerd muck that is the internet, that I realized there's no real one site to bring together the four corners of the nerd world and by that I mean – Star Trek, Star Wars, Comic Books and Sci Fi-isms (Doctor Who, Futurama, Lego, Video Games, etc). I mean it's really hit or miss if you're looking for places to actually buy geek chic for your wedding.

You can get some of it on Etsy or eBay but you're putting so much time and effort into this wedding, there's got to be another way and maybe, just maybe I can be your way. One of the sites that prompt my decision to be your geek wedding designer is geekeverafter.com I came across this site at work and when I saw the title blew a gasket, finally, NERDS UNITE! But if you actually go to the site … there's not much geek happening. There's not much of anything happening. It made me mad.

So I will be your sherpa (or try to be) up the mountain of nerd-ness. Let me know how I can expand or improve.