Halloween – Home here and there

I have to say I was a little sad when I put away the Halloween decorations. Part of it is the neighborhood. I always liked Halloween just fine but the neighborhood we live in now is infectious. There are a couple of houses around the corner from us which are insane. The pictures don’t do it justice. After the kids were on their way I took a short walk up the street myself to just soak in the atmosphere. It really made me want to rethink our plans for the coming year. Maybe a shoot that drops the candy down from our porch? One reason why we don’t get as many trick-or-treaters is that there are quite a few steps up to our house. I should rope in the kids and their friends.

At work we had a lab meeting on Halloween and decided to do a group picture dressed up as characters from the Minions movie. I made myself a distinct nose on a whim and went as Gru. Since I don’t have hair it was easy enough with painted on eyebrows, a black jacket, a scarf and black training pants. Husband went as a crow to work since they always have a Halloween thing and the kids were a wizard and Marissa from the video game Hollow Knight. So the weeks leading up to the day I spend sewing a wizard cape and making butterfly wings. If you ever wonder why some of the wings on Etsy cost so much money I can explain a thing or two about that now.

The not so good thing was that I had a migraine on the day, but it helped with the grumpy Gru look. The morning went ok. I went home early spending some time sleeping off the side effects of my migraine medication. In the evening I felt better luckily.

Do you celebrate Halloween where you live? Did you dress up? How do you feel about the holiday?

pumpkins

Since September the kids keep asking me how much longer it takes until it is Halloween. But now pumpkin patch season is definitely here and the countdown is going. The visit to the pumpkin patch by now belongs to our getting-ready-for-Halloween tradition I would say. The last two years we went to a really nice one in Suisun City, California. A train from the Western Railway Museum will take you out to a pumpkin patch organized by the local Rotary Club. They have a hay stack with labyrinth, hay rides, games, pumpkin catapults, face painting, music and food among other things. The kids love it and we were planning to go again this weekend but now it looks like rain. It’s a real bummer but maybe the weather forecast will be wrong after all?

pumpkinpatch

We already went to one pumpkin patch two weeks ago, so we won’t go without this year even if the rain keeps going. The Petaluma pumpkin patch has a corn maze and everyone was excited to make it through. They also had a big pumpkin field where you can pick your own pumpkins and a corn box for the kids to play with (they liked that part the best). It definitely was a lot of fun. I took so many pictures of sunflowers that day and feel like fall season is upon us.

maze I am not really sure how it is now but when we left Germany Halloween was not a very big deal there. Sure there were pumpkins and fall stuff but not related to Halloween but more to the harvest celebrations. By the way, how is that now? I seem to pick up more and more Jack-o-lantern pictures in my social media feed over the last couple of years. I am still not sure about the whole Halloween dressing up thing. Dressing up always makes me uncomfortable but I prefer Halloween to carnival (coming from someone who only wore black for a while in her youth). We still have two weeks left to decide what to do on the day and how to dress up. How about you? Do you carve a pumpkin or dress up for the day?