HAPPY HALLOWEEN/DIOS DE LOS MUERTOS!

Hello all! Sorry for the late post...I've been running around like a mad woman with the relatives here and I figure hey, getting this in now rather than later is still better than not at all!

 I did a pumpkin for myself that is a repeat of one I did in a past year (sadly was too busy to think originally at the time!)

(yeah... pic from last year, but it's the same idea)

...but I made a cat pumpkin and mouse thing for the place I volunteer at:

 (Sadly didn't take this pic, the place I volunteer at did... since I forgot to after I carved it.  It's a cat--- that had awesome spaghetti whiskers that broke off in some high winds :(  Maybe I'll go back and add them back on)

(Mouse to with the cat)

Also, I found these at the Dollar Store and while I'll plan to paint them up with fun Dios de los muertos designs in the future, it is plain now other than the festive flowers!

Have a great spooky season!

Halloween decorating with a little help from my garden friends

I'm not much into holiday decorating. Just this thing I have about keeping stuff around that you only take out once a year.

I have a few Christmas things I have been given that I like to take out here and there because of sentimental reasons, but as I : 1) have no children who care about that stuff and 2) no one visits during those times to see it, yeah, I'm kind of boring in that regards.

I do have a soft place for Halloween though because I loved it as a child and I decorate a bit then because pumpkins can be bought, eaten and used/composted each year, so there's nothing left to store/put away once it's over!

This year however I have some little (well, not so little depending on your definition) friends to help me with some extra special decorating!


I was surprised too by their enthusiasm! On a recent rain I only noticed this :
(pardon some bad pics, it was rainy and some angles were difficult and shot from inside my sunroom grainy screens)
(over 3 ft in diameter! ...and near the hummingbird feeder, hmmmm...)

(This is web is unfortunately by the back door, however built intelligently out of the way of human traffic!)


(Once again, I keep tilting the camera video feature the wrong way. My apologies, but I think it's still worth it when you tilt your head right a bit. The rain and wind make this so beautiful I think. Ah spiderwebs, lightness and strength.)

(Hi-five for effort!)(ooh! Click on this one above! The hairy detail is great! I had to get really close to this, it was in the huge web and the background was cloud white, thus the brightness)

So, yeah, Halloween decorating? Me and my little friends have got it down.

Now if only I could convince them that the front door would be an excellent place to catch introduce children to the joys of spiders.

(N.B. The golden orb spider traversed to my next door neighbor's backyard, and spun a huge web outside her kitchen window.  My neighbor hates spiders, dubbed it Bruinhilde and then called me and asked me if I might want the spider back.  So I brought it back, let it loose and the next day it ate the spider in the last pic :(

Carving hopes will NOT be squashed this year!

Bah. Humbug. And it's not even Christmas yet.

But it's October, the Halloween season and I got no pumpkins.

I'm bitter because I REALLY wanted to grow my own pumpkins this year for pie, for seeds and most of all to make JACK-O-LANTERNS, but the squash borers decided to sink those plans, grrr.

Pumpkins can get expensive, especially the really big ones I can extravagant on and though I noted some moderately good size ones for $4/apiece I had been so intent from the start of spring/early summer to have grown my own pumpkins, even wishing to get some of those GINORMOUS pumpkin seeds and attempt to make myself a little pumpkin house in the backyard.

Husband wasn't too keen on that one.

Two years ago I bought pumpkins and I was quite pleased with my efforts:


Last year, due to finances, I skipped out on the pumpkins and made crummy brown paper bag lantern cutouts with tea candles illuminating them and they were BLAH as well as wonderfully dangerous I found.

(I realized midway that the cheap polyester costumes that kids get nowadays and in addition to clumsiness on everyone's part were not a good combo. I would like to assure everyone reading that NO ONE caught on fire that night!)

So... I want to do pumpkins again.

Granted I saw these "craft pumpkin" things on sale at craft stores, where it appears you can cut and shape and save for every year, and though I am sure it is cost effective in the long run, I like the whole Native American feeling of using the whole thing when I have a real pumpkin.

Because with a "faux-kin" I'd be constantly channeling my Jack Sparrow and thinking, "But, where's the pumpkin pie?!" (don't you dare tell me to use the stuff in the can!)

Plus there's nothing like cumin and sea salt dusted roasted pumpkin seeds, mmmm, that's autumn for ya.