Halloween in Oz Part 2

I had my Australian Halloween party this weekend.  Apparently, the folks putting on the party were a bit concerned that they had an American coming to the party so they really wanted to do everything up.  And they did a great job.  They had all kind of decorations and they even rented a bunch of B-Horror movies to show on the TV.  At one point they had "Nightmare on My Street" by Fresh Prince playing (though I'm not sure if that was on purpose or not).  They also carved their first pumpkin for the event.  So there was a bit of a competition between my pumpkin and theirs throughout the evening.  It was interesting overhearing the commentary.  I didn't get a picture of their pumpkin for comparison but I was very impressed with Cai's very sharp and clean edge cuts.

I was very impressed b/c Australian pumpkins are very thick.  I'd say the shell was probably around two inches thick.  That made it very had to do any circular cuts.  There were also a ton of seeds but the inside wasn't too terribly messy.  Here's a picture of my pumpkin.  What do you think?

Our costumes for the party didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.  The costume I ordered was a bit short (you could see my bum) and a bit tight.  Had I been going to a party where I knew everyone, I probably would have worn the outfit and just taking the crap I would have been given.  But since this was a party where I knew about 4 people, I decided it was inappropriate and had to quickly throw something else together.  We're having a 1920's themed Christmas party for work this year and when I was in the states in October, I bought a few props to go with my outfit.  I used those with a dress I already had and did a very lame version of a flapper.

We took along our friend MayDay who also had to throw together a last minute costume.  We went to the one costume shop in the city to try and find something but when we saw that the costumes averaged about $150, we quickly decided to come up with something else.  MayDay, in his cleverness, decided he'd go as a cricketer.  He was planning on buying the Aussie jersey for the Ashes anyway, so we did that and bought a cricket bat and some shin pads and he was ready to go.  I suspect that the Aussie's at the party thought he was a bit lame but I thought it was pretty clever for an American to go as a cricketer.

Everyone at the party got into the spirit and wore costumes.  Most of them were thrown together and included fake blood but there were a few good ones.  One of my good friends, Boris, bought a Captain America costume (clever since he's an Aussie).  He ended up winning the costume contest.  I have pictures of Captain America on my camera but I'll have to load them up later.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of me, HA, and MayDay.