WITCH FEST at Gardner Village!!!

BEWITCHING TIME at Gardner Village!

Well, this was my second attempt to attend Witches Night Out at Gardner Village, only this time I actually made it!  

 

This time I used the same costume.  But I did change the wig...
...and the shoes.  

I found them at the DI and then bedazzled them with purple glitter.  Only problem was they were a size 9 and I wear a 7. But they were so witch-edly perfect that I had to get them. Plus they were only 4 bones.  Well, that is before I bought the glitter and the spray adhesive and the glue.  But, they turned out spell bindingly awesome and so I wore them anyway even though they kept slipping off - and that is after I stuffed them with cotton. My feet were in serious pain by the time I hitched my broom to head home.

We had planned on about eight of us witches coming, but things happened that made it so only five of us could go this year.  This is a photo of me, Dawn, and Patti.  We rode down together.  The plan was to ride the Front runner again this year, but we decided with only the three of us, it made more sense to just drive.  So we hopped on our brooms and away we went!

I was not sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised!
As soon as we walked in we were bombarded with little kids and their moms asking if they could take our picture with their kids.  I felt like a ROCK STAR!  It was awesome.  Of course, I know that Dawn (Glinda the Good Witch) was the primary draw, but I had a few that  came up to just me and wanted their picture with me.  It made me feel so good. My very purple hair kind of stood out.   What a party!  We could have stayed in that one spot all night and stayed busy getting our pictures taken with all the cute little kiddos.  So fun!

As soon as we left our rock star spot and went inside a store, this grandma came up to me and asked if I would let her take my picture with her little grandson.  I was very happy to do it and so I followed her to the lil' cutie pie, but he was not feeling it...haha.  He wanted nothing to do with me getting near him.  I kind of felt like Santa Claus when he makes kids cry.  He did eventually warm up (well some) and we sneaked in a photo.  He was just so adorable! 

Here are few shots of Glinda and some of the fun pictures of the little kids wanting their picture with her (or some of the spooks!).  It was SO much fun seeing their eyes light up and thinking she was a REAL princess.  SO cute! 

(You may have to click or tap to enlarge some of these)

A collage of random witched-ness.   

 

The animated witch behind me was amazing and had a cat chasing a huge rat under her skirt.  Awesome!

Look inside the attic of this house!  So scary!

I saw my cousin Angie and her cute daughters there!  Actually they saw me and somehow recognized me!  Must have been the purple hair!  (or shoes... or dress... or hat... or tights)

SO many photo opps!
Here are few (hundred) of them... 

These ladies were my favorite of the entire night.  There must have been hundreds and hundreds of witches there, and so these ladies really stood out.  Their wands were lighted as well.  So fun! 

 We finally met up with Chris and Davaleen!

We also met up with some pretty shady characters!

Well, of course I needed a photo of this!

Love her!


Some shots of the Witches parade.
Anyone can be in it, but we wanted to just watch.  

A few of the crazies....

With a couple of other fellow purple witches! 

 

There wasn't just witches there, but warlocks as well!

  

Some of the trees were covered in purple lights!  So bewitching! 

I found this sign and knew it said it all!

One of the scenes as we were leaving.... Witchey Poo.  cackle cackle

I guess we hadn't had quite enough fun because we wanted to stop and get dessert on the way home.  So we mounted our brooms and off we went.  We got some luscious chocolate and had fun getting the comments and looks in the restaurant.  

This was definitely one of the funnest times I've ever had as a witch. Maybe thee funnest!  The food, the fun people, the music, the dancing, (yes, I kicked up off my heels a time or two and rocked out), the atmosphere  the friends...just all of it was soooooooooo fun!

However THIS came pretty close too! ↓

I didn't blog about our first attempt two years ago and so I wanted to add a few photos of it on this post as well.


First attempt at Witches Night Out at Gardner Village

 

Someone save us!
Yeah, I guess this is illegal.  But we didn't find that out until after they let us out of jail. (jk) 

We met and rode the Front Runner to SLC and then rode Trax to Trolley Square to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  Oh my, what fun riding the Front Runner was.  We got a lot of stares and hilarious comments.  

Check out those eyelashes!  Eek! 

Purple is the new black in witch wear this year.

This was taken as we were waiting to board the Trax.  This guy was in awe of all our costumes and thought we were real witches.


 

Pioneer witches sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked and........walked!  Oh my, it was quite the distance from the Trax to the Trolley Square!
But that was one of the funnest parts of the entire night - walking around SLC as witches.  Loved the looks and stares!

We FINALLY made it to the Spaghetti Factory!!! 
But then we had to wait and wait for our table!
Someone should have cast a spell on them!

Those booth chairs match us perfectly.  It's amazing what a little magic can do!

We had a large group. That must have been why we waited and waited for our table, for our food and then for our checks.  Yes, someone should have cast a hex on that place!

(L to R) Robin, Carla, Karie, Dawn, Davaleen, Jody, Kathy, me, Lisa

Even though we didn't have time, we took a few photos after dinner.  That's when we decided there is NO way we were ever going to make it Gardner Village in time for the Witch Fest. Going to Trolley Square took too much time and so we had to accept the fact that we missed out on the big party.  BUT, we all knew we had more fun doing what we did than if we had gone.  This way WE were the only witches around.  There - we would just be another witch among hundreds of others.

 We were kind of sad, but took heart in the knowledge that:

It's not about the DESTINATION, it's about the JOURNEY!

And what a journey we had!

On the way back, we had Davaleen give us rides to The Gateway in shifts so we wouldn't miss the last Front Runner heading home.  My son Bryce happened to be working at American Eagle that night.  And even though they were closed and the employees were inside doing inventory, all of us witches went over to the door and started to knock.  He immediately saw us and knew his crazy Mom was among the witch fest pounding on the door.  He came and took a second for a quick photo and then had to go back to work.  And we didn't even get him fired!  He's so cute!

Witches in the laboratory lavatory.

Heading back home!  Guess we should have taken our brooms this trip and maybe we would have made it as planned.  But what would be the fun in that?