Last Minute Halloween Costumes

Halloween. I love it. I always have. I used to plan my Halloween costumes a year in advanced. I wish I were kidding. Some of my costume claim to fames include when I was a cup of hot chocolate, a present, a flower in a flower pot, candy corn…I clearly have a thing for inanimate objects as costumes. See a few more here.

Inspired by the past few years, I’m giving you three ideas for last minute costumes. Because yes, all three costumes shown below came together in about a day. They are also all food related. No surprise here.

French Toast

How to:
Black and white striped shirt
Red silk neck scarf
Black felt beret
Bread
String

Toast one or a couple pieces of toast. Let sit out for a few hours to get stale. Using a hot glue gun, glue the toast to a long piece of string. Let dry then tie behind your neck to act as a necklace.

Pig in a Blanket

How to:
Pink dress
Pig ears, nose and tail (buy this one today to have it in time for halloween!)
Blanket

Put on your dress, ears, tail and nose, wrap your self up in a blanket and enjoy the most comfortable costume ever. Optional, but suggested, make actual pigs in a blanket and bring to whatever halloween party you are headed to!

Cookie Monster

How to:
Blue dress
Blue skinny feather boa
Light brown and dark brown felt
safety pins
Headband
1, medium size foam ball
Hot glue
Black paint

Cut big circles from the light brown felt to act as the cookies. Cut small odd shaped circles from the dark brown to act as the chocolate chips. Hot glue the “chocolate chips” to the “cookies.” Safety pin the cookies to your blue dress. Using a serrated knife, cut your foam ball in half. Paint cookie monster shaped eyes onto the foam ball halves. Hot glue blue boa to your headband. Once the eyes have dried. hot glue them to your boa headband. Use the remaining boa to tie around your wrists. Put it all together and you have yourself a cookie monster! Optional, carry around a jar of Perfect CCCs!

If you take a bite of any of these costumes, tag me on social media so I can see!

Annie

My Top 5

The go-to conversation starter in my inner circle as of late is what are your top 5. Top 5 movies first, which then leads into TV Shows. But, I also love to find out peoples generic top 5 things in life.  Here are mine.

image via

Movies: 
1.  Father of the Bride Part II (The part 2 part is very important. I love the first one but the second one reigns supreme)
2.  It’s Complicated
3.  You’ve Got Mail
4.  That Thing You Do
5.  Remember the Titans

10 important life lessons from laguna beach and the hills

TV Shows:
1.  Gilmore Girls
2.  Barefoot Contessa
3.  The Hills/Laguna Beach
4.  Parenthood
5.  Friday Night Lights

In General: 
1.  Mornings (I sleep with my blinds open because I love being woken up by the sun. I’ve been an early riser my whole life. I used to get annoyed I couldn’t sleep in and now I love it. I love mornings so much I even wrote whole posts on them you can read here and here.
2.  Washington D.C.  My love for this city will never die. 
3.  Watching Food Network (especially on Saturday mornings in bed with a cup of coffee or tea)
4.  Cooking/Baking (duh)
5.  That feeling when you slip between the covers and lay your head on your pillow after a long day. 

Your turn. Let me here it in the comments below! 

Annie

Mahalo Hawaii

March 14, 2018: “You know how your New Year’s resolution was to travel more? Well I think we should go to Hawaii,” - Taylor

March 15, 2018: Hotel, flights and PTO schedule.

April 10, 2018: MaryKate, Taylor and I were officially on Oahu, Hawaii.

After landing it was straight to the hotel, bathing suits on then straight to the beach (bar).

Cheers to spontenatity, booking the most memorable trip with 3 weeks notice, and for checking off my goal of traveling more this year. (Next up, Austin, Houston, Aspen...and working on booking more).

We found ourselves at Duke's a few times on the trip, but the best was stumbling upon Duke's on our first day which happened to be a Sunday. "Duke's on Sunday," is their busiest day. Jimmy Buffet even sings about it. Known for being a tourist bar, but even the locals come out on Sundays. You can get a glimpse here. (that video is 2+ years old and I kid you not I recognize people in the video we saw that day we were there).

If you are Waikiki bound, make sure your trip allows you to be there on a Sunday, and make a stop at Duke's!

Our hotel offered complimentary yoga classes every morning. 1, I'm an early riser, 2, I love me some yoga, and 3, I was 5 hours ahead of schedule, so early morning yoga was the perfect way to fill my morning besides staring blankly at the ceiling when it was 4 am but felt like 9am.

*Smoked salmon Benedict, Loco Moco and banana pancakes for breakfast at Cinnamon's. 

We got to Hawaii with very little plans and zero reservations. Traveling with two of your most laid back friends, makes things very easy. Thanks to Yelp and Google, we ate and did all the best things in my opinion. 

Our zero reservations plan worked great beside one slip up the second night. We went out for authentic poke, but the place was apparently so good, by the time we got there they were completely out of everything. 

Luckily, the infamous bakery, Leonard's was across the street. We had read about Leonard's and hoped to make it there one day for breakfast or a treat. They are famous for their Portuguese donuts called malasadas. Think if a sopapilla and a jelly donut had a baby, but with a Hawaii spin because of flavor options like guava and coconut. So poke problems aside we opted for donuts for dinner. A win in my mind!

Goofy's is a must for breakfast, brunch or lunch. So good we went twice! And conveniently right by our hotel. I recommend the açaí bowls and iced coffee. 

We were on a strict Pina colada diet while in Hawaii. So much, I searched for where to get a Pina colada in Oklahoma City. My search came up dry...

*truly the best cocktail I've ever had. The Tropical Seoul: hwayo 25 shochu, pamplemousse liqueur, guava, pineapple and lemon. 

All delicious meals aside, nothing compares to our dinner at Herringbone. Our "splurge" meal of the trip you can say. The restaurant as visually delicious as the drinks and food. 

If I could do this seafood platter again and again I would. 3 words. king. crab. legs. I love me some lobster, but I have never had crab legs and I can confidently say I have been severely missing out.

A Loco Moco is a Hawaiian comfort food dish. The standard version consists of white rice, a hamburger patty, brown gravy and a sunny side up egg. So random it is actually delicious. Served at breakfast, lunch or dinner, a version showed up on just about every menu we saw.

Taylor ordered the Loco Moco at Cinnamon's. It was very traditional and delicious. I then tried the Loco Moco at Heavenly. More modern and organic so they claim. Kulana beef, local egg, local ginger soy glaze, and 10 grain rice with local farm green beans, broccoli, organic carrot, organic lentil beans, and organic black beans. My vegan health foodie wannabe ways loved it. 

After our first poke fail, we redeemed ourselves at Poke Bar. Basically Chipotle, but Poke. Pick your rice, your fish, your toppings, dressings, add-ons etc.

Goofy's round 2 cause we couldn't stay away. This visit included less açaí bowls and more eggs, more carbs and more coffee. We had too much fun the night before...

Something I did not realize is how prevalent taro is in Hawaii. We had bought some chips and snacks the first day for our room, including some taro chips. I didn't think much about it because I can buy the same kind at home. You know that black bag with the pink, orange, and white veggie chips on the cover? Ya, those!

Well taro is everywhere. A root vegetable that helped sustain early Hawaiian settlers, apparently. Similar to a sweet potato, but even more versatile. We had homemade taro chips and guacamole at one beach bar, I saw taro as an add-in option for smoothies, and our favorite, the TARO MUFFIN. A couple of the breakfast spots we ended up at offered the taro muffin on the menu. Basically just an English muffin, but made with taro. And also purple, making it that much more fun.

*Incredible Cajun Fish Tacos at Duke's. So good all three of us ordered them. 

If I am on a vacation in an area that boarders water, I will eat fish at every meal. Oklahoma fish does not compare. For obvious reasons #landlocked.

So for our last meal on Oahu, something with fish and quintessential to Hawaii was a must. The obvious choice, poke. 

Poke and pina coladas aside, the rest of our trip was just as perfect.

Taylor's one request on our trip was to visit Kualoa Ranch. AKA "Hawaii's Backlot." The site where they filmed part of the Jurassic Park movies. I've maybe seen the first JP all the way through once in school when we had a substitute teacher, but I was still game.

Kualoa was 45 minutes (or 15 minutes acocording to our uber Laura -__-) from where we were staying, but it was a great way to see more of the island on our way. Kualoa is a huge valley privately owned by a local family. Movies like Jurrasic Park, Godzilla, 50 First Dates, You, Me and Dupree and more were filmed here. They choose this site for it's idyllic Hawaiian look. 

We opted in to the ATV 2-hour guided tour (S/O to our guide Jay), which I highly recommend. They also offer 1-hour tours, horseback, zipline and bike tours. 

Big dinosaur girls after a morning in the valley!

Plan a hike too. Google may steer you to Diamond Head, but I suggest Manoa Falls. Only an hour round trip, but the hike is still a work out and the views are spot on. All leading to the signature "falls" at the top of the hike! 

Last thing, do a booze cruise. Sorry sorry, I mean "sunset sail." We did this one. 2 hours, inclusive drinks (AKA oopsy juice <--- yup), best view of Waikiki, and to our luck a rainbow over the beach! Perfect perfect thing for our last night on Oahu. 

Pro tip: go on a vacation with two of your best and most easy going friends. 3 is the perfect traveling number. 

Until next time Hawaii.  Because I'm promising myself there will be a next time. Sooner rather than later. 

Maholo (thank you) Hawaii for the best trip ever.

Annie

5 Years

Hard to believe it's been 5 years. 5 years since Take A Bite staked it's claim in the interweb. I really can't beleive it. 

This little website has brought me the coolest experiences, some incredible friends, delicious eats, ups, downs, all-arounds. I can't thank you enough for reading my blog posts, for making my recipes, for snapchatting and texting me pictures labeled #takeabite. It's incredible to think that what started out of the dining room of the OU Kappa house has transformed itself into this. Whatever this may be. 

Take A Bite Quick Facts:

I've written 247 Bites of My Life Posts with another on the way this Monday. 

I've posted 200+ recipe posts. 

This post still remains as my most popular read post, thinking it is much due for an update, seeing as I wrote it 4 years ago. 

These bad boys have made their way to my second most popular post, just as they should. I feel like they are the mascot of TAB. 

You can see how TAB has evolved by reading my 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th birthday posts. 

And it wouldn't be a blog birthday/blogiversary without some Birthday Toast. The stupid easy recipe is linked here. 

Thank you for reading friends. It means the world. Here's to 5 more!

Annie

Goodbye To You

Michelle Branch said it best when she sang, "Goodbye to you, Goodbye to everything that I knew." Goodbye Take A Bite. It's been a stellar 5 years in this corner of the internet with you.

Today is my last day posting at Take A Bite. It took some serious thought and something I have gone back and forth on, then back and forth again, but I'm finally at peace with my decision to close the door on my little food blog.  

I've loved sharing recipes, bites of my life and the occasional fashion inspo post, but after five years I'm saying goodbye to you. 

I hope you understand. I hope you enjoyed the past few years. I hope you were able to make a couple of my recipes. I hope you still come back and visit (the site isn't going anywhere despite my posting coming to a halt). I hope you still following my life happenings on social media. I hope you keep on taking bites.

And I hope you aren't too distracted with all the Easter shenanigans to remember that it is also April 1st.  

Happy April Fool's Day! TAB ain't going no where!! ;) 

Annie 

photos by KGC Photography