a confidential alien investigation (party)

How about a little visual recap of our Alien Invasion Halloween party from this last weekend? Bear with me, there's a lot, but it's pretty cool, so I hope you don't mind. 

THE SETTING:

The entrance to our kitchen, or the "lab", which was quarantined with a plastic curtain and decorated with this simple vinyl graphic. It adds a nice touch, no?

Guests were greeted with flashing lights and lots and lots of caution tape. Hopefully we pulled off the impression of a alien landing site that's been haphazardly taken over by the FBI.

 

Rodger—the hubbs/mad scientist—took breaks from rounding up the aliens to administer vaccination "shots" to potentially contaminated (sober) guests.

The boys got in on the festivities. They were cows, which usually are the first to fall prey to extraterrestrial visitors. Don't worry, no pugs or cows were harmed in making of our party.

Oh yes, the Pièce de résistance! It's our 10 ft. wide, flashing, creepy sound-emmiting, UFO. The aliens have landed!

When putting together a killer Halloween party, lighting is key. It can take your festivities from an awkward grouping of costumed adults, to a serious scene setter. It's probably one of the cheaper things you can do to create instant ambience!

 

Our bathroom was our "clean room". It was equipped with a shiny mylar shower curtain and decontamination chamber for all your radiation cleansing needs.

FEEDING TIME:

Food is another biggie when it comes to throwing any kind of successful party. Here's my "menu" for the evening. Yes, there is a typo. I ran out of R's. If you don't see it, I'm not going to tell you where it is!

I find that a monochromatic fruit salad makes a tasty and nutritious statement. I called this green concoction "Extraterrestrial Fauna". Take my word for it, it helps set the mood.

Then for all the people who aren't on crazy restrictive diets like myself, we have the hubbs's famous adaptation of of the classic buckeye. Peanut butter, white chocolate and Reese's Pieces make up our "Alien Eyes". A friend of mine "procured" some cool stuff from her lab where she works. So I used microscope slides to label the food.

COSTUMES:

Rodger, the Mad Scientist. I love the picture of him!

And just because I'm so proud of it, one more shot of my Vulcan costume!!

I love when guests get into our theme and dress for it. Here's an astronaut and martian girl!

Dr. Who and his adorable sheep lady.

Agents Mulder and Scully came to investigate.

Same dress, two ways!

REPURPOSING: 

These pics are from after our party. We moved a lot of the props outside for our trick-or-treaters benefit. Look closely, and you'll spy me and my friend as Mario & Luigi!

One of the aliens that Rodger hand made (sculpted, casted and poured) all on his lonesome. He's so talented!

happy halloween!

Seriously, how magnificent do these neighborhood boys look? If I didn't know them to be the sweet kids that they are, I'd have probably been pretty freaked out!

Happy Halloween!

my vulcan halloween costume

To go along with our party's alien invasion theme, I decided to go the sci-fi route and dress up like a Vulcan. Spock was a Vulcan, for all you non-Trekkies. Don't look at me like that. I've already professed my dorky-ness to you guys.

The costume came together rather effortlessly, and turned out to be maybe my favorite of all time. I got the wig and pointy ears at a Spirit Halloween store. I ordered the Communicator badge from Amazon. I picked up the dress at Forever 21, and it was on sale, too. A friend of mine showed up dressed as Strawberry Shortcake wearing the exact same one. So it was definitely a versatile piece of clothing! The belt, I procured from Target. I wish I had a full-length photo of me in the costume so you could see my bad-ass boots that I've managed to wear for every Halloween for the past four years.

(Vulcans don't really smile)

The make-up should have been simple enough, yet it still took me an hour. Mainly it was those darn eyebrows that gave me fits. It took me a while to get the points just right. I used a dark brown liquid liner to draw in the extra eyebrows and provide a convincing texture. When I made a mistake with the liner, I'd just brush on a little concealer to soften the lines.

For the whole face I just pretty much put down a nice base layer using my regular Bare Minerals foundation. Vulcans have a pretty even skin texture. 

Then I drew on very thick cat eye-like eye shadow for a vintage touch. I applied some pink eyeshadow on most of the lid and a bright white for the highlights at the edges of my brow and point of the tear duct. Then I added a bit of inter-galactic sparkle with some glittery white eyeshadow all over lid. Finally I topped it off with some big, fake, sparkly eyelashes! 

I was pretty pleased with the overall effect :)

Live long and prosper, peeps, and happy Halloween!

sunday snack :: chocolate coconut squares

Tomorrow is Halloween! Yay, Halloween! Now, I love a Reese's Cup or Twix bar as much as the next girl, but I don't necessarily appreciate all the high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar that come along with the kind of candy you'd find in a Trick-or-Treaters pillow sack.

So I employed my creative brain-power to come up with a treat that excludes all those nasty aforementioned additives, supplies a handful of nutrients, and quells my sweet (or chocolate) tooth. This is important, so I don't end up raiding my nephew's candy bag. By the way, these babies are also free of gluten, soy, eggs, nuts and added sugars. So they're pretty allergen friendly. They also comply with the paleo diet, which I have recently become an avid follower of.

Try it and you'll love them! Unless you don't like coconut. It's a polarizing food isn't it?

Ingredients:
yields 25 servings

1 cup shredded or flaked unsweetened coconut 

1/4 cup coconut oil

5 pitted Medjool dates
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of sea salt

Method:

• Heat the coconut oil on low heat in a small saucepan until completely liquified. Add the coconut flakes and continue cooking on low heat until warm and some of the oil soaks in. Set aside.

• Pulverize the dates in a food processor. Then Add the coconut oil and flake combination, vanilla, cocoa powder and sea salt to the dates and process until pasty.

• Pour the mixture into a small silicon pan and smooth out until flat and about a 1/2" thick.

• Place pan in freezer for about an hour or until the mixture is frozen solid.

• Remove from freezer and pop the mixture out of the pan (this easy removal is why I used a silicon pan). Cut into 1 inch squares. Be sure to keep in refrigerator until ready to serve.


(sorry for the crappy iPhone pics. My SLR battery was charging)

approximate nutritional breakdown per serving:
calories - 50,  fat - 3.7g,  saturated fat - 3.2g,  sodium - 11.6mg,  total carbohydrates - 4.5g,  fiber - 0.8g,  sugar - 3.3g,  protein - 0.3g

Anthropologie October Window Display

I just adore this Anthropologie window I spied today while in Columbus. Who woulda thought you could string up gourds with brilliant autumnal-hued yarn, pair it with a cute outfit, and make it look absolutely gorgeous?

Oh, Anthro, you've done it again!

a confidential invasion party

Halloween is quickly approaching and the hubbs and I are in full-blown party planning mode. In order to get everything set up for our party next saturday we have to start the set up this weekend. We're doing an alien invasion theme this year. While it's a little stressful to have the house mocked up for an all-out extraterrestrial takeover for the entire week (I keep tripping over cables and alien limbs), setting up is definitely the most fun part of the process.

One of my personal favorite aspects to our party each year is coming up with an invitation to fit our theme. This year, I really tried to take inspiration from those FBI reports that get released to the public that always have so much "confidential" information blacked out that it's hard to even tell what they're really about. It always looks like it has been photocopied about 15 times, too. Ever notice that?

halloween at urban outfitters

Here at Hopscotch Headquarters, Halloween is a pretty massive event. In fact, we spend most of the year preparing for this happy time at the end of October when we go all out with a huge celebration. Ask around. Our parties are legendary. 

Obviously, I can get behind a company—like Urban Outfitters,—that shows a healthy appreciation for Halloween. Check out their fun little Halloween Shop for some costume/decorating inspiration. Really, I think they may have chosen some of their kookier regular merchandise and styled it a in a way that resembles costumes... But I'll take it!

foxy friends

Just a little page out of my sketch book.

back to the start

I was at the movies this past weekend when this short film began to play. Willie Nelson's version of Coldplay's "The Scientist" narrates this simple, but breath-taking animation. As the story begins, a farmer owns a small, traditional farm, but slowly it starts to evolve into something unnatural—the sort of farming that dominates our food-scape today.

He watches helplessly as his animals are treated inhumanely and then fed on a conveyer belt to a processor where they are boxed and then shipped out, via semi-truck into the world. In the end the farmer decides to take his farm back and "Go back to the start" as Willie Nelson croons.

It turns out to be a commercial for Chipotle. I didn't see that one coming!

I'm compelled to share this because nutrition and healthy food sources are subjects near and dear to my heart. The graphic designer in me also loves pretty, emotionally-charged short films. So hopefully it appeals to one of those sides of you, too.

Without further ado, here it is. I hope you like it as much as I do! Go ahead and watch it full-screen. It's so worth it!

inspired by :: nike found

I'm a pretty sporty girl these days. Whether I'm running, biking, weight lifting or training in my CrossFit gym, I find myself wearing a lot of workout clothes. So I was ecstatic to come across all of this styling inspiration from the Nike Found Tumblr page. Here are just a couple of my favorite looks from their collection, for exercise or just being a fashionable lady: