Halloween only comes once a year, so I try to cram as many Halloween-related activities into the weeks surrounding the holiday as possible. Luckily the weekend before Halloween (I guess, in reality, the weekend before the weekend before Halloween) was filled with spooky activities.

On Friday night the Scrap Exchange, which is still doing awesomely in its new space at Golden Belt, opened the exhibit An Offering: La Ofrenda.  The exhibit is a series of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) altars created by Durham artistic community members.  The exhibit, which runs until November 12th, is meant to be collaborative, people can bring photos and mementos of loved ones to add to the altars throughout the show.  Some of the altars are quite beautiful and moving.

Saturday we threw on our best stage blood and joined the undead at the Raleigh Zombie Walk.  While it was not the best-organized event of all time, it was pretty fun.  Approximately 200 zombies clustered around the acorn at Moore Square and at 7:00 we started lurching around downtown Raleigh.  I’m not sure what route we took (I don’t know downtown Raleigh all that well) but I know we went by the Capitol Building where we saw some Occupiers (who looked a little worse than we did, eek!) and we also shambled past Beasley’s Chicken and Honey on Martin Street.

Tammi and Scott came too, which was great!  Zombies are always best in herds and friendly groups.  As you can see many of the zombies wore fun costumes as opposed to just standard ripped clothes and zombie blood.  People are so creative!  Tammi was a yoga zombie complete with yoga mat.  This caused me to drone stuff like “Yuppy zombie want sushiiiiii” or “Yuppy zombie want pinot noir…”  It is also easier to shamble along if you are groaning and moaning.

After the zombie walk we went to Tir na Nog.  There was an impromptu Zombie Walk after party, but we just sat and had dinner.  Tir na Nog is an Irish pub in downtown Raleigh across the street from Moore Square.  The staff responded pretty well to the horde of blood-covered zombies (although our waiter screwed up Tammi’s order) and the Irish folk band even changed some of their lyrics to be zombie related.  Way to play to your audience, player of the electric bagpipe!

Sunday, after washing off all the stage blood and appropriately disposing of our ripped clothes. we carved two of our three pumpkins.  I carved the third one tonight–it is a classic pumpkin face, with triangle eyes and a triangle nose, no pictures yet, sorry!  Jon was nice enough to prep and hollow all the pumpkins beforehand.  I have the best boyfriend!

Of course we saved the seeds.  Jon roasted them last night (best boyfriend!), but one weird side effect of my changing life situations (new job) is a loss of appetite, so I haven’t had any yet.  This has happened to me in the past.  I usually lose a ton of weight (yay!) but not having an appetite is pretty lame.  I imagine my appetite will return with a ferocious vengeance sometime next week.

Jon carved some ghosts and I carved a kitty-bat.  No really, it was called a kitty-bat on the template.  So cute!

I’ll post some pumpkins all lit up in the dark pictures once I place my pumpkins outside.  For now they are living on the back patio, protected from hooligans (hooligans!)  I hope that y’all are enjoying your last week before Halloween and that your pumpkin carving is going well and your costume is planned and finished!  If you need any assistance you should check out my previous Pumpkin Sundays and my Freaky Fridays posts!  I promise to give you some last-minute costume ideas later this week!