It is once again my favorite time of year .... crisp air, apple donuts, county fairs, no AC needed and still no snow! It is the perfect intersection of all my favorite things! But my favorite thing about this time of year is Halloween. I realized that I have written blogs about Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but not really about my favorite holiday of the year!
There are several things about Halloween that disturb me:
- It is the doorway to winter, once we pass Halloween it is all downhill from there.
- The commercialism - while I have to admit I am guilty of supporting the purchase of costumes, decorations and goodies it has come to the point of ridiculousness when a bag of 100 pieces of candy costs $9.00.
But let's put those annoying things aside for a moment. Last year we had a Halloween party for a handful of 6 year-olds. It was unfortunate that we planned our party for the same day that hurricane Sandy hit our shores. But the kids had a great time in the mist (it actually made it a little spooky which would have been great had it not been so cold).
Here are some pics from the big event:
These are the "body part toss" game. My husband made the coffin out of pallet wood and we purchased the body parts at the dollar store. We hung a scary face guy in the coffin and the kids tossed the hands and feet at it and then they came out of the bottom.
This is the "Frankenstein Toss" Don't ask me how mu husband made Frankenstein because I have no idea. But we made Jell-O brains and Jell-O eyeballs for the kids to toss in Frankenstein's head. The morning after Hurricane Sandy he fell over and all his brains fell out!
These are the kids searching through the coffin of guts (colored spaghetti & noodles) so they could find the key to the box that holds the goodie bags (and yes, my husband made these as well).
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| This is one of the Frankenstein Jell-O brains that got stuck in a spider web! LOL! |
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| This is a cemetery made out of what usually is our garden. |
And then the food:
And our puppy Bumblebee - who we dressed up as a Bumblebee (she was not pleased)!
So what can we do this year - I may have mentioned once or twice (or three times) that I am a Pinterest junkie. I have an entire folder of Halloween crafts and food and cool things to celebrate the dead and the harvest and the beginning winter. I have already purchased costumes for myself and the now 7 year old!
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| This is my costume |
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| This is the 7-year-olds costume |
So it is beginning to look like a really good Halloween. I have picked out the links from Pinterest below as definite things to do. I am really hoping that the weather holds out and we can have another party in our yard.
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| Meat Hand |
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| Halloween Graves |
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Spooky Front Stairs and a Leg Eating Pumpkin ..... spooky
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I know I am usually all about making vaguely profound observations of the world in which we live. My observation for today has to be that sometimes you just need to have some fun. Halloween makes me feel like a little kid again, especially when I go through the candy bag and pick out my favorites (don't judge .. you know you do it too!). Perhaps remembering our dead with carved pumpkins, and blue ninjas, and gory meatloaf was not exactly what the Celts had in mind 2000 years ago - but what would life be without this crazy celebration. Boring I think!
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