Spooky Season
As you can tell, I’ve loved Halloween from an early age.
It’s never too early to learn how to bewitch, after all.
I walked the dog yesterday morning and took a moment to admire the sights around me: crisp, fall leaves on the sidewalk, pumpkins on porches, and ghosts, skeletons, and graveyards that have cropped up in yards along our route. The stores are stocked with huge (albeit expensive!) bags of Halloween candy, and who can tell if the cobwebs are real or decorative? It’s spooky season, and I am here for every second of it. Give me a fistful of candy corn and a scary movie (Halloween Kills comes out October 15 and I know my calendar is marked), and let’s do this.
A friend sent me this meme, but I had to respond emphatically, “YES! We still need Halloween!”
We live in a pretty fabulous neighborhood for Halloween; not one of those giant places where you are inundated with hoards of trick-or-treaters, but just enough of a crowd to make it festive and fun, with a good costume show and plenty of adults getting in on the spirit of the occasion as well. I’m still pondering our family’s costumes (Clint and the dog are less than enthused but know they are doomed to participate), but we will be ready when the evening arrives. I’m hoping to come up with something low maintenance enough to keep the guys from being totally miserable but still keep it fun, so if you have the perfect group costume for two adults and a fluffy white dog, do let me know.
Our yard, of course, is ready for All Hallows Eve as well. In years past, we have used a skeleton theme but this year we thought it was time to change it up a bit and we went with a witch motif instead. I hope you find it brewtiful. (See what I did there? I really do love this time of year).
Here she is in the daytime, stirring up her cauldron with her flock of black birds. I feel like I can hear her cackling!
And at night, our witch really stirs up some toil and trouble (thanks to the magic of LED lights).
A few light-up witches’ hats above the front door and then plenty of pumpkins to finish off the porch.
Raise your hand if you already knew I was going to buy a new wreath for the front door. Just creepin’ it real.
I found some cute witch hat floral picks, tied a big Halloween mesh bow,
and added a sign to the mailbox: “Come in for a spell.”
One of my neighbors lamented that he’s having a hard time getting into the Halloween spirit now that he is an empty nester. I pointed out that there are still lots of neighborhood children to appreciate the decorations he usually puts out all over his front yard, and with more than two weeks left until Halloween, there’s plenty of time to get it all out and enjoy it. “I know,” he said, “but my wife thinks it’s tacky.”
“Oh, it is!” I assured him. “That’s what makes it so fun!”
With the world we live in these days, I need less real life scary and more make-believe spooky. I’ll take fewer every day problems and more boos and scares and chills and thrills. Let me trade my adult size worries for fun size candy bars, and my big girl pants for a costume and some face paint. Do we even need Halloween anymore? Witch, please.