Wizard Dress Up

Here at The Wall, we love Halloween! More than that, we love dressing up. We REALLY love dressing up.

We've gotten into costume a few times this past year, making the most of every opportunity. So if you're looking for more ideas for group costumes, we have you covered!

We dressed up in Star Wars gear for May the Fourth Be With You (is anyone else OBSESSED with Star Wars?), wizards and ghosts for Harry Potter's birthday, and the emotions from Inside Out this Halloween. I wasn't kidding when I said that we love to go out in costume!

Our favorite costumes so far are those from Harry's Birthday. And with Halloween coming up, I thought we would share our ideas for dressing like wizards!

Our manager, Ashleigh, was our favorite as Bellatrix Lestrange. Look how much she loves Voldemort!

For her makeup we used a thick white base, with contouring around the nose and cheeks for a more severe look. We also used false eyelashes and red lipstick. She's wearing a black lace dress with a black wizard's cape, and black riding boots. Her wig was little bit tougher. We curled the entire wig using a 1/2 inch wand curler, then teased and tousled each curl for a messier (and more authentic Bellatrix) look.

Devin and Lindsey dressed as Nearly Headless Nick and Moaning Myrtle! Devin wore a white collared shirt paired with a gray striped doublet and tunic, and white tights! We darkened his eyebrows with a brown paste, used a thick white makeup base to make him more ghost-like, and darker makeup was applied to hollow out his cheeks. We then glued on a bushy mustache and goatee, and drew a scar along his neck to finish.

For Lindsey's Moaning Myrtle costume we simply dressed her in black wizard's robes with a Ravenclaw tie, with Coke bottle glasses and a brown wig. Her makeup was done very similarly to Devin's, with a white base and some contouring. Before we pinned her wig on, we combed it out and split the hair into two low ponytails. After the wig was pinned on, we adjusted the ponytails a little for a better fit. And we can't forget the toilet lid around her neck! Her Moaning Myrtle costume wouldn't be the same without that touch.

Let us know what you think of the costumes below!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Halloween Inspiration: Pinterest Edition

Attention party planners and food lovers: we have a Pinterest!

Check out our boards at The Wall - BYU . We have a plethora of food inspiration (including a whole board dedicated to gourmet burgers), party planning hacks, decor ideas and more. And we must say, Fall is the best time to explore Pinterest, or create a profile if you haven't yet. There are more beautiful autumn pins than we could ever dream of.

If you're looking for fall and Halloween inspiration we've got you covered. Here are our top 5 favorite fall pins of the week (all photo, decor and recipe rights go to the respective websites. Click on the title to be taken directly to each site).

1.  Apple Crisp Stuffed Baked Apples
From Tiffany at lecremedelacrum.com

Nothing screams fall like crisp apples. These tasty treats only take 30 minutes to make and they primarily consist of an apple... so they must be healthy, right? ;)

2. How to Host a Pumpkin-Carving Party 
From realsimple.com

The Halloween season isn't complete without some pumpkin carving. It's even more fun in a group! Realsimple.com shares some great and easy tips to make your next pumpkin-carving party a success.

3. Candy Corn Punch
From nelliebellie.com

Anything with Fanta and pineapple is bound to be delicious. Plus, how cool is that candy corn garnish?

4. 5 Easy DIY Decorations for your Dorm Room
From hercampus.com

Glowing eyes, clothespin bats and water jug lanterns are just a few of the ideas you'll find from hercampus.com for decorating your dorm room this Halloween. Don't spend money on expensive Halloween decor, DIY instead!

5. Pumpkin Cheesecake Snickerdoodles
From Alyssa at therecipecritic.com

Need we say more?

What are your favorite Halloween pins? We'd love to hear about them below!

Happy haunting!

Lunchtime with Chef Gary

Here at The Wall, we have our very own Chef. Meet Chef Gary

Name Gary
Restaurant The Wall
Married Yes
Kids Yes, 1
Age 26
From McKinney, Texas
Culinary School Le Cordon Bleu, in Dallas, Texas
Knife Hand Right

Chef will be making us the Guacamole Bacon Burger. Our Guacamole Bacon Burger is made with 100% USDA prime which sets it apart from any other burger on campus and any other burger in Provo. We're the only place on campus that serves fresh made guacamole. We make our guacamole several times a day so anytime you get it it's never older than a couple hours old. Being from Texas I ate a lot of TexMex which means a lot of guacamole and lightly spiced and typical TexMex type entrees so having guacamole here remind me a little bit of home.

How old were you when you started cooking?

I was 14 when I started cooking professionally in restaurants. First restaurant was a little family owned restaurant in McKinney, Texas called Beef'O'Brady's. It's actually a chained based out of Georgia. But they had six restaurants in Texas and one of them happened to be in McKinney. 

What made you get interested in Culinary arts?

I love to eat. Everyone loves to eat. My favorite subjects in school were always choir, theater, and art. I really strove to do something with that in mind and I grew up with the understanding that "If you love what you do you never work a day in your life." Although that's not entirely true, I knew I wanted to do something in an art capacity. There's a difference between a cook and a chef and the big difference is that a chef sees food as art, everything from plating, color, and presentation to the flavor, the way that things mix as they're cooking and they all come together as a finished product. It's like the movie Ratatouille how they eat the two things and it creates something totally different. It's always been beautiful to me. Then, there's the simple fact that I can cook anywhere in the world, I don't need to worry about a job opening up, someone is going to need someone to cook so it seemed like a smart plan. 

What's your favorite meal to cook?

That would be rack of lamb. I sear mine and a panko herbed crust and then bake it in the oven until it's medium rare and I serve it over potatoes and fried kale and pine nuts with jalapeno jelly as a sauce.  

What did you have for dinner last night?

The remarkable thing about chefs if we actually don't eat dinner a lot. When you spend all day around something you don't want it when you get home. So most nights when I get home I make myself a bowl of cereal. 

Favorite restaurant in Provo?

I can't say anything else but The Wall! But if I had to pick somewhere else, that would be DP Cheesesteaks. They make authentic cheesesteaks. They have a variety of sizes and different combinations of vegetables. Essentially it's a family run business. The owners are from the East coast so they know all about authentic cheesesteaks. The dad, son, dads brother, and immediate friends of the family that work there. Basically everyone has a say in what happens at the restaurant.   I really like the way that it's run, the people who run it, and it's hard to beat cheese and meat on bread. They also have apple beer, it's delicious!

If you weren’t cooking, what would you do for a living?

I would be an army solider.

Person you love to cook for?

My son. He eats anything. 

Do you have any pet peeves in the kitchen?

A dirty work space. I've actually shut down this kitchen during service before so that they could clean it.

What ingredient could you not live without?

Bacon.

Most embarrassing cooking moment?

One time in culinary school in my third block class which was meat fabrication and entree preparation. I started one of the mother sauces, called espagnole. Basically what it is is a beef stock that you fortify with more vegetables. Then you let it simmer until it's a thick sauce. Then you add red wine or another acid. So I started boiling one sometime. I get the aromatics out of the vegetables so I started simmering it and I totally forgot about it and just left it boiling. I ended up starting a whole other batch of it, still forgetting the first one. So at the end of class there was this pot sitting over there on one of the stoves that nobody was claiming and it hit me that it was mine and I went over and it was just caked on beef stock and it looked like beef jelly with burnt celery, carrot and onion just like sticking to the bottom of it. The whole rest of the classroom was totally clean and I had to stay there a extra hour to clean this pot.

Lunch With The Provo Mayor

We recently had the opportunity to have lunch with Provo Mayor John Curtis and Deputy Mayor Corey Norman at the Wall! It was a blast and a great chance to discuss growth and improvement in the community.

John Curtis has been the mayor of Provo, Utah since January 5, 2010. In his time as mayor he’s energized and strengthened the community in a number of ways, including:

• Revitalizing downtown Provo (particularly Center Street and University Avenue), with trendy boutiques and restaurants and encouraging other businesses to build in Provo.
• Being involved in the Provo music scene by supporting local concert venues and artists. 
• Trying to bond and build up community relationships between Provo and Orem.
• Building the Provo Recreation Center, which just so happens to generate the highest revenue of any rec center in the country (you read that right – the highest revenue of any rec center in the country).

All we can say is #Provorocks.

To get to know the mayor better, we asked him a few fun questions about his undergrad experience at BYU. Here’s what he had to say.

What's your favorite memory from your time at BYU?
   In 1979 I attended the BYU Jerusalem study abroad program. It changed my life.

Which building did you spend the most time in during your time at BYU?

   The Tanner Building

What was your hardest class at BYU?

   Stats 101. It was hard but I loved it and I still brag that I received an A grade.

What apartment complex(s) did you live in during school?

   I lived in King Henry. Some things never change.

How did you propose to your wife?

   I built a shadow box in the BYU wood shop that had all of our dating pictures in it with a note that asked her to marry me. I didn't know anything about woodworking so I bribed a roommate with a pizza dinner at Brick Oven.

Did you walk, bike or drive to campus?

   I had a VW bug and a bike. I used the bug to go to SLC to date the girl I would marry and used my bike to get around Provo and the campus. The attached picture is taken of me with by VW in the King Henry parking lot. I later traded the bike for a phone.

Mayor Curtis with his VW Bug 

Big thanks to our awesome mayor for lunching with us! We can’t wait to chat over burgers and fries again soon.

To learn more about Mayor Curtis and stay up-to-date with Provo city, visit his website and blog: provomayor.com

Instagram: @provomayor

Twitter: @Curtisut

5 Must-Haves For An Islander BBQ

1. Get leis for all of your guests

Wearing a lei is the perfect way to get your guests involved and feel in the mood of the islander theme. Greet your guests with a lei and then they get to keep it to take it home! You can find some great ones on Amazon like these.

2. Decorations to get in the mood

Small touches can make a huge difference! We used little touches like creating a corner with tikis in it.

At The Wall, we have a giant chalkboard on one of the walls. We wanted do a fun drawing and we found this one. We wanted to do a simpler version of it so we pretty much traced the edges!

For the centerpieces we used a stick of bamboo with ocean shells surrounding it and added a few flowers on top.

3. Great food

For our Islander BBQ we have two options: The Hawaiian burger or The Spamster burger. Each had their own unique flair that includes some traditional food from the islands to our American burgers.

4. Poster/Invitations

Make sure to either advertise for your event or make invitations for your guests. There are lots of themes that you can pick from like beach, tiki's, floral, ect. For our event we did a vintage postcard look for our posters.

5. Find some amazing performers

We brought in a group called Happy Hula. They performed several different Polynesian dance numbers including a dance with split bamboo sticks as pictured below.

One thing that we loved that the dance group did was involve some of our crowd. They had them practice some Tahitian dance moves!

BYU Watch Parties

Last Saturday BYU faced Nebraska in their first game of the 2015 season. With tension in the air Tanner Mangum, BYU’s Freshman Quarterback, made the play of his career, a "hail mary” for the win, in front of a stadium almost entirely dressed in red. 896 miles from home, the Cougars had their season debut, but most of their fans were watching the game from a screen back at home.

Some people might like watching these big games in their own lazy boy, but we feel like nothing can replace the feeling of watching a game when you are surrounded by fans who are just as excited as you are. Watching BYU away games can be just as exciting as home games thanks to The Wall’s “Watch Parties.” (You can click Here to see what was happening at the Wall during Mangum's epic play) This year The Wall will be teaming up with “The ROC” to bring the away games to you in a high energy environment that can hold up to 460 people!

Here are some images from games that have brought huge crowds into the Wall.

In the past BYU students and the Provo Community alike have sung the fight song side by side inside the Wall and watched some of the greatest games in BYU’s history from Football to Basketball.

We invite all of you to join us at the Wall for the next away game and to help us cheer on our Cougars and raise our pride of the white and blue! Go Cougars!

The New Electric Sound Feature

The New Electric Sound

According to their Instagram profile, they are well brought up young men who respect their elders. They describe their sound as a surf-rock/oldies inspired band with a new twist and shout. Like a hydro-electric Surfaris Mothra rising from the ashes of an African village burned to the ground by minotaurs from Buddy Holly's personally shaded zoo garden in the sky.



The New Electric Sound formed in 2011 in Provo, UT and released their first album in August 2012. They've performed in many venues since. Their songs have been in advertisements, web series, and YouTube videos. They released their first music video in late 2012 featuring the song "Heartbeat." They moved to Los Angeles, California in 2013 and have been playing shows throughout the West Coast ever since.

Their band is made up of five members; Scott Vance on lead vocals and guitar, Tom Brinton on bass and vocals, Ben Zabriskie on lead guitar and vocals, Tony Carlson on drums and vocals, and Nigel Goodwin on keys and vocals.

Time Magazine describes them as, “The New Electric Sound is a five-piece surf-pop-rock band that fuses simple, time-tested, ‘50s-era rock ‘n’ roll with current indie-pop styles, delivering something original, with a sweet sugar coating of nostalgic goodness. Young, handsome, and heavily cardiganed, The New Electric Sound reminds us that songs of love, innocence, and heartbreak are just as cool today as they’ve always been.”

We asked them several questions to introduce us to The New Electric Sound.

How did the band members meet?
Scott and Nigel went to high school together in Eagle, Idaho. Ben and Nigel were roommates in Heritage Halls at BYU. Colin and Nigel were floor mates in Deseret Towers at BYU. Tony's just some guy we met here at BYU! Go Cougs!

What are your spirit animals?
Colin: Giraffe (for obvious reasons)
Tony: Tardigrade
Scott: Afghan Hound
Ben: Cooper the Corgi
Nigel: Whatever Kanye West's spirit animal is

What is the craziest thing that has happened at a show below?
A woman dressed as a cat, on a day nowhere near Halloween, kept throwing dollar bills at us on stage while purring and saying that she was our number one kitty-kat fan. Either that or the time that we started playing a show for a room with zero people in it San Francisco. By the end of our set there were 6 people. Man, that was a crazy crowd.

What band do you guys fangirl over?
Colin: Frankie Cosmos

Tony: Blink 182
Scott: The Zombies and The Caesars

Ben: Mosco Rosco

Nigel: Kanye and The Kooks

How do you keep things fun on the road?
By having very deep, existential conversations, usually led by Ben. These generally end up with us coming away very enlightened, confused, or angry; oftentimes all three.

What is one thing you cannot live without?
Colin: The New Explosive Sound
Tony: Taco Bell

Scott: Vegetables

Ben: The Book of Mormon
Nigel: Necco's

What is the your favorite thing to do as a band?
Eating as many tacos as we can and watching the O.C.!

Their album is available on iTunes here.
Their website is here.
Youtube channel is here.

Instagram: @thenewelectricsound
Twitter: @thenewelectrics
Facebook: The New Electric Sound