A Kiwi Halloween

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, and I moved to New Zealand knowing that it is not as big of a deal here. What I did not realize is that it is not really a thing at all. On the 31st, not a single Kiwi wished me a Happy Halloween. There are no witches in shop windows and not a single one of the parents I know mentioned trick-or-treating. One store was already setting up for Christmas before the day was over.

We got invited to a Halloween party at a bar, and they had a costume contest, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet that people would get dressed up. Of course, we didn't get this invitation until 2 days before the party, so we had to act fast to pull something together. The way that the timing worked out kind of made it feel like a Project Runway challenge.

We went to the nearest costume store half an hour before we had to be somewhere else, so we had 20 minutes to shop and didn't want to spend more than $50. Then we had just one evening to put it all together!

I'm a unicorn! Rob was a dragon, but didn't want any pictures - it wasn't a very good dragon.

On Friday we rushed home from work, quickly got dressed and headed out to the costume party. On our way there, we did not see a single other person dressed up, and were slightly unnerved when we arrived to the bar to find a bunch of non-dressed-up people standing outside. When we got inside we saw a couple people in costume, but they were almost all employees of the bar.  There were some other patrons in costume, but nearly every single costume was either a dead something or a zombie something. There were a couple dead brides and grooms, a dead cheerleader, a dead ringmaster, etc. Not a single person was wearing anything quite so bright and cheery as a hot pink glittery unicorn.

From top left: Us with our friend Katie, aka Grumpy Cat; My sister Erin, who coincidentally was also a unicorn this year; an epic Dragon vs. Unicorn battle - I'll let you guess who won

Thankfully, we are used to standing out a bit on Halloween, so took it all in stride. Hilariously enough, my Project Runway version of a Halloween costume took second place in the costume contest. Last year, when I painted my entire body blue, I only came in third.

This is what 3rd place looks like in Chicago.

Of course, last year I was something dead/zombiefied, so the Kiwis probably would have crowned me the Queen of Halloween. Next year we'll know better - maybe go as a unicorn and dragon after the epic battle?

On Halloween night we watched our annual scary movie. This year Rob chose Black Sheep, which is a horror film about zombie sheep in New Zealand. Imdb's plot description is "An experiment in genetic engineering turns harmless sheep into blood-thirsty killers that terrorize a sprawling New Zealand farm."  To give you an idea of what this movie was like, I leave you with an image from our trip to the grocery store yesterday.

Mmmmmm... sheep hearts