Thorpe Park Fright Night 2016

As is now my Halloween custom, I travelled up to Thorpe Park for my third Fright Night (2014 and 2015 here). This year, Marie was at a convention, and we'd been to Alton Towers Scarefest anyway, so I took Myles along with me instead.

Halloween OOTD // Ghost Dress

I have a real issue: I can't stop buying Halloween-themed clothes! In fact, I keep having awesome ideas for new Halloween outfits but I don't have enough time (or money, let's be honest!) to carry them all out. I guess I'll just have to leave some until next year. One of them is an absolute banger, believe me! Anyway, I saw this ghost dress on Boohoo and I had to have it despite my already sizeable Halloween wardrobe. Yes, it's got to the point where I have an actual Halloween wardrobe. Someone stage an intervention!

Ghost dress: Boohoo Tights: ASOS Boots: Missguided (similar here)

Halloween OOTD // Witch of the Woods

I've already written a post about this dress but a) the photos went a bit fuzzy, b) I was wearing leggings and c) it's just too perfect for Halloween not to feature again. I even wore the legging shorts that I kept promising you. Wahey! An outfit post with no leggings! 
Star print maxi dress: Simply Be Hat: Primark (similar here) Shoes: Peacocks (similar here)

Last-Minute Halloween Wishlist

A couple of weeks ago, I created a Halloween wishlist filled with awesome spooky-themed clothes, accessories and homeware. Then, inevitably, the retailers stocked even more stuff. I always have this dilemma at Halloween- if you buy stuff too early, will you miss out on even better stuff released later? But then, if you leave it too late, will all the good stuff sell out? Luckily for me, I'm happy with my haul this year, although these additional items are pretty cool!

Halloween OOTD // Pumpkin Picking

Oh man, did this post cause a lot of indecisive stress! For one thing, I just couldn't decide whether to go for a pretty, hint-of-Halloween outfit or full-out novelty pieces (let alone which novelty pieces). Then there was the issue of which pumpkin patch to visit. Last year, when we cut our own Christmas tree, we noticed the farm sold pumpkins at Halloween. However, they explained that because of the UK's climate, they can't offer a pick-your-own service and instead have piles of pumpkins on display to choose from. According to them, this is the same for every other farm in the country... but then I saw Pickwell Farm had a whole field of pumpkins to choose from. Finally, on the day that we'd scheduled in our visit, it was absolutely pouring with rain! Still, we decided to make the drive down to Southampton, having settled on Pickwell Farm in my novelty bat skirt, and see what the weather was like there. To our relief, it was a perfectly lovely day with just a few scattered showers.
Jumper: ASOS (Similar here) Skirt: eBay Tights: ASOS Wellies: Primark (Similar here) Backpack: Primark (Similar here)

Halloween Nails // China Glaze Liquid Leather

Last year was my first Halloween with acrylics and I'd been planning for it all year. I knew exactly what I wanted! Then Laura and Matt decided to get married the day before Halloween so I was forced to go with nude nails instead. Selfish, I tell you! The good news is that this year, nobody's decided to get married and ruin the nail schedule so I finally got to fulfill my wishes!

Review // Lush Halloween 2016

Hooray! The best time of the Lush year is here! As always, I've bought the majority of the Lush Halloween collection to review. Although there are the usual classics, there are also some brand new products that I couldn't wait to get my hands on! 

Spooky Book Wishlist

You know me, I love a creepy book or two. My Amazon wishlist is about 98% books on death and true crime, so what better time to share some of my coveted texts than Halloween? Just don't judge me, OK?

Halloween Week 2016 // Ghost of Halloween Past

Yes, it's that time of the year again! When Becky Deadbug pops up and takes control of the blog for the last week of October. Last year, I was woefully unprepared so I've taken steps this year to ensure that doesn't happen again! In fact, I may have prepared a little too well because Halloween week is more like Halloween-thirteen-days. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it though! Let's call it Halloween Fortnight. To launch my Halloween-thirteen-days Fortnight this year, I'm going to take you on a little trip through memory lane and share some of my costumes from Halloweens past. Warning: Scary photo quality ahead! 

1999 

Fright Night 2015 // A foggy day at Thorpe Park

In what is becoming something of a tradition, Marie and I popped down to Thorpe Park for their Halloween Fright Night event. Unlike last year, it was very cold and very, very foggy. All day, the park was covered in a blanket of the thickest fog I have ever seen. As you can imagine, this made taking photos very difficult but it was really atmospheric. Perfect for Halloween!

Halloween look // Bride of Frankenstein

What with Laura's wedding right around the corner, I haven't had as much time to devote to Halloween looks as I'd like. Nevertheless, I had some spare time today and thought I'd give a quick Bride of Frankenstein look a whirl.

Spooky books on my bookshelf

Ooh, creepy books are my jam! Anything that's a little eerie or macabre is right up my street, so it took me a while to choose just a few highlights. Some of these I already featured in my top 5 books about death but I could hardly miss them out! If you're looking for some Halloween reads, start here!

FICTION

My favourite creepy artworks

It will come as a surprise to nobody that my favourite artworks are those that are a little creepy in some way (they're also all postmodern sculptures because that's my thang). With Halloween approaching, I've decided to pop a spotlight on some of my favourite spooky sculptures. 

Marc Quinn- Self

Source
This is one of my favourite pieces ever. It's a simple sculpture of the artist's head. Just your basic self-portrait. Except it's made from eight pints of Quinn's own blood. It's frozen inside a refrigerated unit so it retains its shape and, interestingly, Quinn makes a new one every five years. Talk about commitment! Until it was loaned out, one of my favourite things to do in London was hover next to the sculpture and watch people's reactions as they realised what it was made of.

Review // Lush Halloween 2015

I know the real draw of Lush at the end of the year is the Christmas collection, but I am very partial to the Halloween products. It's a shame they're released at the same time really because a) it means I have to spend all my wages buying both collections at once and b) Halloween tends to get overshadowed. Unfortunately 2015 has let me down a little. Remember last year where we had a bunch of brand new products and two Bonfire Night bath bombs? This time round, we have one new product- Nightwing shower jelly- as well as two returning and the Lord of Misrule shower gel that is part of the permanent collection at Lush Oxford Street. It's all a bit underwhelming compared to 2014's offerings. A shame but, of course, each product is fantastic so I'll let them off this once!

Morbid London

In the summer, I wrote a list of the best free things to do in London, and with Halloween coming up, I thought I'd write a similar guide, this time on the creepiest, spookiest, most morbid things to do in London. My specialist subject and not a cheesy tourist hotspot in sight! 

Haunted London Theatreland Tour with Secret London Walking Tours and Every Hotels

Halloween is coming up and everyone is getting into the spooky spirit. As everyone knows, anything to do with death and the afterlife is right up my street so I was super excited to be invited on the Haunted Theatreland tour with Secret London Walking Tours and Every Hotels. 

Thorpe Park Halloween Fright Night

Back in our teen years, Marie and I used to visit Thorpe Park all the time. Our friend Steph worked there so we pretty much had unlimited free entry and it was amazing! However, now we're adults and all, our visits have dwindled considerably. The last time we went for summer 2010, and that's just not acceptable. So we decided we'd make our grand return on Halloween, in costume and everything.


We both decided on gory make up effects but Marie went a little bit more extreme than me, with one side of her face completely ripped off. She looked amazing and, although there were hundreds of people in fancy dress, got a lot of attention, ranging from "Wow, that's awesome!" to "Your face is disgusting!" and even a couple of screams.



Knowing that Halloween would be insanely busy, not least because it's half term, we decided on splashing out for fast track tickets. We bought the Full Throttle package which included one fast track for Stealth, Saw, The Swarm, Colossus and Nemesis Inferno. Although we needed to queue up for over 90 minutes just to purchase the fast track, it was well worth it as that was the longest wait we had all day. With wait times up to 85 minutes for a single ride, it was definitely a wise choice on our parts. Within 3 and a half hours, we'd ridden all of the main rides and had the rest of the day to relax.




The Swarm was the ride that we were most excited about as we hadn't yet had a chance to ride it, having last visited before it opened. Being the thrillseekers that we are, we chose to ride backwards and it was incredible! Definitely the best ride in Thorpe Park by a long way. It's absolutely terrifying and the whole area surrounding the rollercoaster has been given a creepy apocalyptic theme. 




Once darkness had fallen, the park became very spooky! Since we'd been to Thorpe Park so many times in our youth, we know the layout well without the need for a map, but in the dark, it became very disorientating and I found it much harder to navigate. Suddenly there seemed to be many more costumed attendees, and scary live actors including a plague doctor.

Although I'm a complete wimp, we decided to brave one of the mazes and settled on The Blair Witch Project, which was given a scare rating of 2/5. Despite the broadcast wait time of 2 hours, we were actually only in line for half an hour before being unleashed into the wooded area, which is in complete darkness. To add to this terrifying experience, smoke effects and creepy sounds surrounded us. As we made our way along the path, actors jumped out and screamed at us with flashing torches. Although you're not allowed to touch them, the actors are allowed to come into contact with you and one of them even stroked my face! I was very proud of myself as I wasn't too scared, and actually found it easier to cope with if I screamed in the actors' faces. After 5 minutes, we'd made it out of the maze alive and feeling very smug! Not smug enough to brave the scarier ones though!

Since the queues for the rollercoasters were so large, there were barely any waits for the smaller rides such as Detonator and Rumba Rapids (which I will always call Rubber Dinghy Rapids). The rapids were terrifying in the dark as we were put in a raft without any other parties and there was very low lighting along the route. Floating through wooded areas and caves was especially creepy!
Just before we left, we decided to check out the wait time for The Swarm. It said 70 minutes but we figured we'd give it a go as the advertised times are almost always exaggerated. To our great surprise, we ended up walking straight onto the ride with no line at all! Since there were 10 minutes until the rides closed, we had time to go around three times in a row: Twice forwards and once backwards. Definitely the highlight of the night for me!

By the time we'd got out of the car park (20 minutes of waiting for someone to let us pull out and another 40 minutes stuck in the traffic to leave), we were both exhausted but very happy at having had such a great day. We loved it so much that we've made plans to visit Alton Towers' Scarefest next year, and I for one cannot wait! 

#BloggersHalloween

After weeks of planning and preparation, yesterday was finally the day of the Bloggers' Halloween party. 

Before we went to have a boogie, I met up with most of the bloggers at the hotel and we filled up with Nando's!

Chickens make us happy!

We sneaked a load of chicken masks to colour in whilst we waited for our food. 

This is Alyssia's seduction face! Stunner or what?

Alyssia also had the most amazing nails!

My little brother Myles turned up and was dressed as Master of the Blogger Harem. He was so sweet- He sat in the corner of the room and grunted from time to time, but he absolutely loved it!

From left to right, we have got:
Weeping angel- Alyssia
Minnie Mouse- Sarah
Roger Rabbit- Leona
Myles and me
Just peeking behind me is my BFF Marie, who doesn't have a blog
Queen of Hearts- Lara
Tinkerbell- Beth
Pikachu- Nadine
Zombie- Fernanda
Alice- Kayleigh

Now, I know it's bad to use flash. The venue was dark though, and my camera really didn't take to a super slow exposure. I figure that the harsh exposure and shadows are kind of Halloweeny!

Leona was in charge of the playlist and she did an amazing job. Every track was a throwback to the 90s and I'm sure everyone squealed "THIS IS MY JAM!" at some point during the night!

After spending the night surrounded by bloggers, Marie quickly realised how awesome us bloggers are and is now considering starting her own blog. 

However, if there's one thing you need to know about Marie, it's that she isn't the best at composing photos. Nevertheless, here's a photo of my outfit- I was the Jessica Rabbit (Halloween style) to Leona's Roger Rabbit. The dress and gloves are both from ebay. Unfortunately, I had to dance with my arms out at right angles all night because the sequins completely ripped up my underarms! Ouch! 

Totally looks like Nadine and Leona are about to kiss, amiright?

I set up a little cake-and-cookie decoration station and held The Great Blogger Bake Off. Myles chose Alyssia as the winner with her Weeping Angel-inspired cookie.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the finished product, but here it is in the making. Sarah made the #BloggersHalloween cookies in the first photo, which I love! 

Zoe got creative with the silver balls. She also got creative with the pumpkins. I'm not going to tell you what she and Sarah drew on them!

My boo! 

It was then time to count up the votes for the fancy dress competition. The Candy Corn Yankee Candle for most creative costume went to Leona's Roger Rabbit, the MAC Darkside lipstick for funniest costume went to Nadine's Pikachu (her tail dancing was quite the sight to behold!) and the unanimous vote went to Alyssia for the scariest costume. It included the creepiest mask, but I didn't get a photo of it unfortunately. 

Therfore, best overall costume, and winner of the zombie boot camp c/o Ladbrokes, went to...

Only now do I realise just how much Alyssia won! She ended up with a Lush Pumkin Bath Ballistic, a Witches Brew Yankee Candle (which she later dropped and smashed) and the zombie bootcamp! Somebody's lucky night! 

It was then time for the apple bobbing tournament. We competed against each other in head-to-head battles and the first to grab an apple went through to the next round.

In the end, and after three battles between Myles and Leona, who tied each time, the joint winners were announced as Zoe and Myles. 

He was a little confused as to what a bath ballistic was (I quote: "Is it a cake?") but after finding out its purpose, he kindly donated his prize to Sarah. 

After the party, we headed back to the hotel, where Leona and I snuggled up in bed together (of course!) and talked about Harry Potter until at least 3am. 

She had to dash off in the morning, so I took advantage of the insanely comfortable bed and started editing my photos. 

I watched a spot of Jeremy Kyle too, of course!

 

Alyssia, Beth and I then headed to Guildford for a spot of shopping. On the way to the station, we bumped into Sarah and took quick detour to Clinton's, which resulted in us all acting as enablers and convincing each other to buy Yankee Candles. 

We had to leave Sarah on the platform as she was going straight home to attend another event- Her third in a week! Blogging is a busy life! 

 
After buying out the entirety of Lush, and spending far too much time stroking onesies in Primark, we had a spot of lunch in TGI Friday's. We ended up spending 2 hours in there, but it was lovely to catch up! I'd already met Alyssia, but it didn't feel like I'd only met Beth 24 hours ago!

We had the prettiest drinks- A Passionate Sunrise and Bubblegum Daiquiri. After assuring me that the daiquiri was non-alcoholic (yes, I know daiquiris are usually alcoholic. That's why I asked!), the -adorable and very lovely- waitress sheepishly informed me that actually "there is a little bit of rum in it". It was just too pretty to resist though. It really tasted like bubblegum and it had popping candy around the rim of the glass. Delicious! 

Even the slushies are blog-perfect!

Phew! I had a busy couple of days! From leaving the house at 8:30am to buy decorations on Thursday, to arriving home at 5pm yesterday evening, it has been non-stop. Although it's been very tiring (not to mention stressful, as I'm sure Leona and Marie will testify!), I have had so much fun and made some wonderful new real-life friends too! 

I'm even thinking about organising a casual bloggers sleepover in the summer. Watch this space...