BRAINS......

Last week I wrote a post about monsters and my sister from another mister, Becky asked about zombies. Now of course I can't disappoint my sister, so Becky-this one is for you!

There are three reasons I love zombies:
1-They love you for your brain
2-Zombies don't leave, they can't move too well and they may have lost their legs.
3-The love to go shopping! Hello! Original Dawn of the Dead!

Starting off with a little appetizer we are serving up Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. OMP is a huge fan of this movie and I have to admit, I am too. Even though the special effects are strictly "C" grade (using a waving flashlight beam as a flickering firelight) the story is all "B" baby. A theater troupe decides to go to a remote island, do a little "druid" ritual and dig up their dead friend. Little do they know that their buddy is all zombiefied  and the rampage begins. The zombies are the one thing that the producers didn't skimp on-they are truly terrifying and extra gooey.

Now we get to the main course. I'm not really sure why zombies have to be SS soldiers. Sometimes they seem to go hand and hand ala Zombie Lake and Dead Snow. Shockwaves is the best of the Nazi Zombie movies. Yes, for some reason there is a genre. Anyhoo....Shockwaves has Peter Cushing in it and that makes me very happy. A yacht crashes off the coast of Florida thus summoning the zombies and the nibbling of brains begins! I'm still unclear how the nazi zombies ended up in Florida but hey-I can suspend belief for 2 hours.

Oh my goodness! We've made it to the dessert! Versus is probably one of the best Japanese zombie movies out there. You have gangsters, a resurrection forest, and lots and lots of blood. So much blood.  Oh wait! Did I mention the samurais? No, I am not kidding. A prisoner escapes and heads to the forest with a little cutie only to fight off gangster and zombies and have flashbacks of being a kickass samurai. It's a crazy combination that works brilliantly.

All right all you fans of the undead. I could go on for hours and hours about crazy zombie movies. It truly is one of my favorite genre. The one thing that I am going to say is shamble on down to your favorite video store and rent these three awesome flicks.

Salivating Saturday

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere! I love anything pumpkin-pie, cake, seeds. Add a little spice to that orange mass and you've got yourself a delicious dish! I ran across this recipe for pumpkin brownies and I couldn't resist. Pumpkin and chocolate! I'm in HEAVEN!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip  Brownies

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon pumpkin-pie spice (if you don't have pumpkin spice, you can make your own with 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, 3/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon each allspice and cloves all ground-I use less ginger but that's totally up to you. )
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/2 to 1 package chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate but you can use semi sweet also)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with foil, leaving an overhang on all sides. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, pie spice, baking soda, and salt; set aside

With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium-high speed until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in pumpkin puree (mixture may appear curdled). Reduce speed to low, and mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake until edges begin to pull away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely in pan.

Lift cake from pan (using foil as an aid). Peel off foil, and use a serrated knife to cut into 24 squares.

These taste great with tea and coffee. The bitterness along with the spicy sweetness of the brownie is a perfect fit. I think I just described myself. Anyhoo! Enjoy!

Feel Good Friday!

 It's Friday! Oh yeah!  I am so excited that we are getting into the Halloween season. The house is almost decorated, the fire is blazing and I'm ready to settle into a Feel Good Friday. Let's see what I have for you my little kiddles.

I really think I need this cute little felted pumpkin cupcake. Fabric Fancies has adorable cakes, pin cushions and wreaths. Each cake is made to order, which makes them even more special.

I absolutely have the biggest sweet tooth known to man. I can't help it. If you dangle a donut in my face, I will follow you anywhere. When I saw these banana split bites, I about dropped over dead. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea! P.S-this has nothing to do with my theme but I couldn't help it.

Head over to Bakers Royale and check out these wonderful tasty treats. Here's the secret. There is ICE CREAM INSIDE the bananas! No, I am not kidding you! It is brilliant. 

When Staar84 posted this over at Craftster I instantly fell in love. The Raven is stitched up from the famous Edgar Allen Poe poem. It blows me away!

This is the perfect costume for Pete. I'm pretty sure that he has already built his jet pack.

Okay guys and ghouls! Once again, Turner Movie Classics is showing Hammer Horror films and this time we have ZOMBIES! I'm off to stoke the fire, heat up some apple cider and have the dogs attack my bunny slippers. Have a great weekend everybody!

Bad Little Puppies

These are such bad little puppies! Getting into all sorts of trouble, but I can't be mad-they are just too cute!

Tie One On Tuesday!

Guess what I'm doing tonight? No, I am not sitting on my butt, sipping a few cocktails while watching Ghost Adventures. I'm decorating the house, sipping a few cocktails while watching Ghost Adventures. Geesh, what do you guys think? I sit and eat bon bons all day while downing a magnum of champagne-I mean granted that is my dream.

Anyhoo, where was I going with this? Oh yeah! It's October and that means Halloween and that means decorating and enjoying a few libations while making the house spooky. These are great drinks to bribe your friends to get them to come over and help you put out the plastic tombstones and fake spiderweb.

This is such an easy drink and people are able to handle it a lot better than Rob Zombie

Red Zombie
2 oz. Gin
Juice from 1 1/2 lemons
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
carbonated water (tonic or seltzer)
Shake gin, juice of lemon, and powdered sugar with ice.
Strain into a highball glass over two ice cubes.
Fill with carbonated water, stir, and serve.
Garnish with a red zombie eye by de-stemming a maraschino cherry and placing a chocolate chip (pointed side down) into the hole.

Okay, so you don't have friends to come over and help with the decorations. Grab those little goblins you call kids and put those nimble little fingers to work. You can reward them with Candy Corn Punch

Candy Corn Punch
1 Cup vanilla ice cream
2 cups orange-colored sorbet or sherbet
1 Cup yellow-colored sorbet or sherbet
1 gallon tropical blend juice
1 Liter ginger ale
Line a 4-cup 32 oz. Bundt pan with sheets of plastic wrap. Extend plastic wrap down into mold and over sides to make it easier to unmold the ice cream.
Soften ice cream so it is easy to spread, but not melting.
Add vanilla ice cream into the lined ring mold and smooth top surface making it level. Add orange sorbet on vanilla and smooth top surface making it level. Add yellow sorbet on orange sorbet and smooth top surface making it level. If ice cream in ring mold becomes to soft to support the next layer, put the mold in the freezer for 15 minutes until firm. Freeze mold until party time.
Pour juice and ginger ale into punch bowl. Invert mold on to a large plate and gently remove ice cream. Slide ice cream from the plate into the punch for a candy corn ice cream float.

So, you have no friends, no kids, only little furry beast looking up at you. They can't help, they have no thumbs. You can still whip up a cocktail to honor those furry creatures I guarantee that this will have you howling at the moon.

The Wolf Bite
1 oz Absinthe (in the US, we can't get real Absinthe, unless you make it, which I do not suggest-so just get the watered down version and be happy with it)
1 oz melon liquer
1 oz lemon lime soda
1 oz pineapple juice
In a cocktail shaker add  Absinthe,  Melon Liqueur, pineapple juice, and ice. Shake vigorously and strain into 2oz. shot glass. Splash lemon-lime soda on top and a drizzle of grenadine.

You don't have to be scared to stir up these spooky cocktails. They are easy to concoct and will leave you and your guest with big toothy smiles. Just a few sips of these yummy drinks and your friends, neighbors and even relatives should be willing to help put your decorations up while you kick back and relax, they may even put up your Christmas lights for you-yep, they are that good.

AGH! Monsters!

Well, well, well....will you look at that? It's time for Shocktober. Oh yeah, you  heard me right, a whole month of scary movies. One of my favorite things about scary movies are the monsters. The sillier the monster, the better!

My FAVORITE monster is the Creature in the Creature from the Black Lagoon. How can you not love a slimey monster that just wants to hang with the ladies. A scientific expedition looking for the proof of the fish missing link gets more then it bargains for when they find the real thing, not just the fossil remains. Lots of great underwater action, a guy in a rubber suit and one of the cutest bathing suits ever is all you need to know about this Universal Monster classic.

Do you like dogs wearing shredded carpets? If you do, than The Killer Shrews is the movie for you! Besides the shredded carpet dogs, James Best aka Rosco P. Coltrane of Dukes of Hazzard fame stars in this fine piece of cinema. Once again, we just can't keep our hands off mother nature and thus the killer shrew is born. How will the shrews be stopped? Who will save us? Well sillies! Rent it and find out.

 Okay, so I've noticed that in the 1940's and 1950's people really had a fear of gorillas. I don't get it? I mean, did gorillas run rampant on the streets? Did the people of that time already know that we were going to be ruled by apes a la Planet of the Apes? Anyhoo, Robot Monster has two things that our mid-century modern ancestors feared most. Robots and Gorillas. Oh yeah! I forgot about radiation, big lizards and cute girls screaming. The marrying of a diving helmet and gorilla suit? Pure genius !

These are just three bad monster movies that I highly recommend these cool Shocktober nights. If you are having a bad day, pop one of these fine *ahem* movies in your DVD player, sit back and have a good belly laugh.

Scrappy Dog Sunday!

It was one year ago today that we brought home our little bundle of joy. Mark had told me that he didn't want anymore kids-he was finished and then BAM he told me me that we were driving to rural Washington to look at a little man. We grabbed the girls, headed north, went past pasture after pasture of Alpacas(I'm pretty sure after saying 6 times that we should have the Alpaca lifestyle Mark was ready to turn the car around) we arrived at a  farm with tiny little babies running around everywhere.

There he was, running around like a maniac, keeping up with the girls and showing us that toothy grin that he is so famous for. At that very point, he melted our heart. We brought the little guy home and he cried for a little bit in the car but otherwise he was a perfect  angel....until that night. He would never settled down, cried the whole night and eventually Mark had to go downstairs with him and sleep on the couch. All I could think about was did we make a mistake? Are we crazy? We have two Jack Russells and now we have a Miniature Pinscher. The next night was fine and each night after that has gotten better. Of course, he thinks he security and must check out every little sound. If someone sneezes 2 hours away, Pete can hear it.
I'm not gonna say every day has been a walk in the park. We have had to secure the backyard more than ever because he is an escape artist, he's not a fan of little kids and will follow some house guest around barking at them. He has marked his territory in the house a few times and decides at 4am it's time for patrol of the backyard. Every time he does something he knows he shouldn't, he looks up at you with those little eyes, perks the ears up and gives you a toothy little smile as if to say, "I'm just a puppy, mom....I love you, did I mention that? I really do." Then my heart melts and I forget why I was so angry in the first place.

This little black and tan puppy, in a year, has managed to wrap us around his little paw. He brings Mark so much joy and when that little nubbin of a tail starts wiggling, well, it's all over. He loves to chase birds with the girls, steal treats when he gets the opportunity and snag your blankets in the middle of winter, but we love this little man. We can't imagine our life without him. The smile he puts on our faces and the laughs we have with him takes away all the cold feet nights. So, here's to you Pete! You are the sunshine on a rainy day and the rock in my shoe and I love you for that.