Halloween is a big deal in our house. It’s pretty much a month long celebration that involves pumpkin patch trips, thrift store decor bargain hunting, an evolving display of decorations, scary movies, “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown”, a pumpkin party, a ridiculous number of jack-o-lanterns, multiple costume changes, a pioneer cemetery photo shoot, and all sorts of festivities on Halloween night. We start planning out costumes a year ahead, and piece them together with second hand items and sometimes duct tape. We have costume bins in the garage like some people have Christmas light bins. Halloween fun is serious.
This year we turned our little front yard into a cemetery that you have to walk through to reach the door.
I found a few second-hand tombstones and skulls, and gave them a new lease on life (terrible pun intended.)
My up-cycled project masterpiece of the year is Mr. Scary Pumpkinhead Guy. I got an old electric jack-o-lantern that didn’t work, unscrewed the panel with the light bulb from the bottom, set it on the prongs of an upside down rusty tomato cage, and draped a ratty grim reaper costumer over it. He’s so creepy that I get goosebumps walking by at night.
Our undead garden gnome guards the front door, and in spite of his intimidating appearance, actually seems a rather chipper fellow. The cats aren’t really sure what to make of him, but I think he’s probably nice.
Between him and this raven skeleton keeping watch from our dining room windowsill, marauding ghouls should be pretty well scared off.
I couldn’t help myself and threw a little locavore humor in the mix. This sign hangs in the kitchen above the stove during the month of October, to remind us of the important things.
Speaking of eating local, all of our pie pumpkins and Jack-be-Nimble mini pumpkins from the garden make a cheery addition to the kitchen windowbox.
We got this Japanese Chirimen pumpkin from our CSA farm, and it became a centerpiece on the kitchen island with some wool sweater pumpkins the kids made for me when they were in grade school. They also brought home these “magic beans” from their farm field trip with first grade buddies last week, and my mom sent some felted wool acorns. It doesn’t get much cuter than this.
My new favorite decorating idea is taking vintage blow mold trick-or-treat buckets and putting led candles in them for a fun nighttime effect. I think a pathway lined with them would look really cool.
We’re counting down the last few days of tomfoolery, and I wish you all as much Halloween fun as we’re having over here!
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