Halloween 2016

I know its nearly a week since Halloween, but better late than never I say! I thought it would be a bit of a bummer having Halloween on  a weekend this year, but actually I had a pretty great day.

It was a Monday, so I still had to go into work but I thought I'd dress slightly more creepy than usual (well not really), so I wore my wolf man dress (It's not made by me,  the label is Sourpuss clothing).

We did "secret trick or treat" at work, a bit like secret Santa, but only better because it was Halloween themed. We have some pretty great bakers in my team and one of my colleagues go this amazing cemetery brownie!

I received this week ghost with fudge inside, the ghost is now in my craft room holding all my thread.

               After work we went to Film Society, where they were screened Night of the Demon in honor of all things Halloween. I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while and it did not disappoint! I love old horrors as much as I love the modern ones (well actually often more than I love the modern ones).

 After the movie we went to the Space Place for a Halloween show in the planetarium, I'm looking forward  to taking my nephew Lukah here when he visits later this month.

The show included a free creepy cupcake, aren't they so amazing? It was pretty hard to choose only one, but I went with the ghost as he's a little bit cute as well!

I hope you all had a great Halloween, ot a not too terrible Monday if you don't celebrate Halloween.

A few photos from my weekend

Hello All! I had rather a quiet weekend, but I did take a few pictures of what I got up to, so here is my weekend in pictures.

On Saturday morning my friend Jess came over from Masterton for a bit of a girly pampering morning and we went and had pedicures. I got blue sparkly toes!

Later on we heading to Invinsible Mojo at the bottom of my building, we bought the ticket for this high tea ages ago! Glad we finally had a chance to use it - the high tea was pretty good and not too over the top with the amount of food they served. I also went to Craft 2.0 which was actually in the city this time rather than out at Upper Hutt. It was still insanely busy - so many stalls, so many cool things, I could spend a whole weeks pay quite easily at Craft 2.0, but instead I settled on buying just this one necklace. Very restrained I think - particular as I was very tempted to buy a knitted fox stole with glowing eyes (not very practical for summer - but it had GLOWING eyes! amazing).I also bought this fabric over the weekend which I used to make my next project in my Red Velvet DIY Dress Up Course. I haven't really been doing much on the course over the past little while but I am determined to get back into it. I will post photos of what I made soon - the project was actually super easy, I hadn't done it as I was scared of using my machine to make button holes - lame I know.On Sunday Rich and I went to watch our local football team the Wellington Phoenix - but this time we lost 2-1 to Melbourne Victory - Boo!!Also on Friday Night Rich and I watched the remake of Fright Night - I am a horror geek from WAY back and generally I am NOT a fan of remakes. But this one was pretty awesome - Colin Farrell as a vampire, David Tennant as a Kris Angel type Los Vegas magician and equal parts blood and hilarity. I highly recommend it!

Image from here.

Hope you all had a super weekend!

Bucheon Film Festival

As soon as I finish work tonight I'm going straight to the subway station so Rich and I can make the journey to Bucheon and attend the Bucheon International Film Festival.

We are going to meet up with Joseph and his son there, we'll be catching up for dinners and seeing a few films together.

Here's the films Rich and I will be seeing at the festival - in order of viewing:

Down Terrace - United Kingdom

Confessions - Japan

Death Bell 2 - South Korea

Gintama - Japan

We are also seeing a horror triple feature on Saturday night - it's actually a little unclear which films are showing in the triple feature but I am pretty sure House of the Dead is one of them.

It's mostly going to be a weekend of horror films but that is my favourite type of film - should be a great weekend.

Movie Update - Movies 35 & 36

A while ago my mum sent me a few horror DVD's, including a Pet Sematary boxed set. Last night we watched the original Pet Sematary movie. It's been literally years since I watched this film but I still love it! I'm sure everyone knows the story - when things die and you bury them in the pet Sematary they come back to life but not quite as they were.

I love this movie, the crazy cat (well the living dead cat), the strange next door neighbour and the university student that the (doctor) father in the story tried to save after a horrific accident that follows him around on occasion to warm him about the pet semetary - not to mention the mothers deformed sister from her childhood that still haunts her memories. What's not to love? Plus the Ramones feature on the soundtrack. Awesome.

Keeping with the horror and cats theme is Cat People. In this movie, back in the day, there was a group of people that interbred with big cats - namely black pathers (I think) anyways speed forward to modern times (well the eightes). Nastassia Kinski is an orphan who had just found her long lost brother Malcolm McDowell - it turns out that their parents were "circus folk" and died before they could see theire children grow up.

The rest of the moving revolves around finding out exactly what cat people are and how Natassia Kinski deals with it all. Seen as it's seems that this brother and sister are the last of their kind.I really liked this gothic horror movie - unfortunately movies like this just don't seem to get made anymore. It's slightly off the wall and the music is amazing and it includes David Bowie in the soundtrack.Awesome.

Movie Update - Movies 28 - 32

It's time for yet another movie update, I've actually watched quite a lot of movies in the last week or so but still feel like I'm falling behind in my movie viewing!

First of all is "Twin Peaks - Fire Walk with Me". Recently, Rich and I completed watching Twin Peaks season 1 & 2 and decided it was time to watch the film. I hadn't heard good things about the film and it was made two years after the last TV series but it's a prequel to the TV series.

The film wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, some of my favourite characters from the TV show weren't in the movie, but overall it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and it did tie up a few lose ends from the TV series - but it didn't explain everything. But then with Twin Peaks I think that there isn't an explaination for a lot of things.The second film I watched was "Zombieland" - I've been wanting to watch this one for a long time, but I just never seemed to get around to it. This movie is great, it doesn't take itself series at all, which is what I like in a horror movie. There's some awesome zombies and Bill Murray - what more could anyone want in a movie?I always find that the best way to follow up a zombie movie is with a good vampire movie. In this case the movie is "Daybreakers". I missed this movie when it played in the cinema here, so I was happy to finally have a chance to see it. It turns out in the future, basically everyone has chosen to become a vampire which means there's not much left to eat. This movie is basically about some vampires trying to manufacture artificial blood for sale and other vampires trying to become human again. There's so pretty awesome vampire moments in this one - especially when they are testing the fake blood. I also love what becomes of malnourished vampires.
Next up is the Classsic "The Godfather" which I was lucky enough to see on the big screen at CGV at Yongsan. This movie is awesome, all kinds of awesome. I love it.
In a side note, my friend Joseph told me that Marlon Brando refused to accept the Oscar he won for this film due to the treatment of the Native American people. Instead a Native American woman called Sacheen Littlefeather accepted the award on his behalf. This makes Marlon Brandon even more amazing - if that's possible.
The final movie on the list is a fairly cheesy kids film I watched on a Sunday night whilst I was crafting. According to the movie, there are some people who can read books aloud and they come alive - literally. A while ago the Dad in the story (I forget the characters name but it's Brendon Frazer) reads a book to his daughter and in the process he releases one of the characters from the book. The only problem is, when you release one character from the book, someone from our world gets dragged into the book. In this case his wife was dragged into a book called "Inkheart" the movie focussed around the guy trying to release his wife from the book and the evil characters from the book basically trying to take of the world. It's an easy no-brainer watch for a Sunday night.

Chucky is back!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been teaching prepositions - in, on, under, beside. For each topic I teach four classes and the last class is always a review class.

For my preposition review class my students we given a picture of a bedroom and asked to draw certain items in the bedroom. For example - draw a bag under the table, draw a book in the bookcase, draw a pencil in the pencil case.

The first time I taught this class (I teach each class eleven times) I was treated to a round of blank stares when I said "draw a doll on the bed". The children all knew what a bed was, but the word doll was a mystery to them.

When we marked the exercise, one of my brighter children happily told me that the doll he had draw was "Chucky" and made the horror movie stabbing motion with an imaginary knife.

I can remeber when "Child's Play" came out when I was pretty young. I know that there have been subsequent horrible sequels (I watched "Seed of Chucky" last year - that was a mistake) but I really didn't think these kids would have any idea who Chucky was.

In a later class, when I teaching the same lesson and I was greeted with blank stares when I said "draw a doll on the bed" - I followed it up with "A doll, you know, like Chucky". I recieved head nods of acknowlegement and a few horror movie knife motions from some of the boys.

When teaching in Korea, every day is truely is an adventure. I am however, glad I am a horror fan - I have friends who cringe at the mere thought of Chucky. I'm not sure what they would think of a classroom of Korean boys with their invisible horror movie knives.

Creepy Cute Swap

I am currently taking part in the "Creepy Cute Swap" on Craftster - this swap is totally down my ally. Creepy is my favourite sort of cute. My partner, loves cat's so I really wanted to include cats in the swap package. She also told me that she would like some more softies for her collection. So I decided to make a collection of softie kitties based on my favourite horror movie monsters.

I based my kitties on the pattern for kitties in Aranzi Aronzo's "The Cute Book".

Here's some photo's of the kitties I made - starting off with Drac-Kitty.

Drac-Kitty was a young kitten, living in the hills of his Eastern European homeland. One day, whilst out exploring the woods, Drac-Kitty came across a dark and mysterious cave and he decided to explore inside. He heard the flap of a bat wing and next thing he knew he awoke in a luxurious castle, with a new owner and a desire for blood.....

Next is "Bat Kitty" (he's my favourite).

Bat Kitty was born from an unholy union between a cat and a bat. To overcome his tragic origins, he decided to help people by flying around and giving out free hugs.

My next creepy cute kitty is "Graveyard Kitty"!

Graveyard Kitty was walking along the road one day when she was hit by a car and instantly killed. But her body landed in a strange burial ground. The next time Graveyard Kitty awoke she had an unnatural desire for BRAAAAINS...
My final creation was "Franken-Kitty"!

Franken-Kitty doesn't know her origins, she just awoke on day in a strange laboratory in the hills of Germany. All Franken-Kitty wants is a friend - will you be her friend?