Halloween Countdown

In this land of eternal summer, the only thing that denotes the changing of the seasons is which holiday to celebrate.  Some would argue that there are indeed seasons here, and it's true - the temperature does lower a few degrees in the winter and there is more rain in the winter (which I love).  However, in my book, "change of season" entails autumn leaves, winter ice, spring flowers, and hot summer splendor.  You can blame my prejudice on having grown up in the Northwest, where the locals are usually of the firm opinion that it is truly the best place on earth, and, when required to live elsewhere, they look forward to the time when they can return "home".  I'm sure many people feel that way about the place they grew up; but for me, that place is Oregon.  Not too hot, not too cold, and gorgeous.

Anyway, I digress...  the other day at dinner Eliza asked me, "Mommy, what season is Christmas in?" I about keeled over from dismay, but really, how was she to know?  We've spent Christmas Day at the beach before, so how is my 6 year-old to know that Christmas is in the winter? 

Which is why I try and take every opportunity to decorate my house according to the various holidays; it's my way of trying to generate the excitement that seasonal changes automatically generate, but that here we don't experience.  No frosty breath and crunchy, fire-red leaves here...so instead, I plaster my house with decorations so my kids can know what season it is.  Obviously, we're still working on that... :-)

 

So on our front porch you can see the painted fabric chair back covers that I made a few years back.  I just took a white sheet, cut it to size, sewed ribbon all around and left about 18" hanging loose from each of the corners so it can be tied to the chair back.  Then I painted the funny characters, and even used q-tips to paint dots and stripes on the ribbon.  Q-tips are my favorite dot-makers.  The pumpkin faced tins were just big metal urns that I got for maybe a buck or less (I don't remember) at a garage sale.  You can't tell, but they're crackle finished and they have a lot of texture to the surface.  Guess I need to get a close-up of those.  They'd look great with cornstalks sticking out of them, wouldn't they?  Anybody want to ship me some cornstalks?  LOL

 

Those black fuzzy things are bats made from black cardstock and little pieces of black boa wrapped around them.  They have googly eyes, but of course you can't see those.  And the wind is blowing them all sideways, so you can't really see the wings either. 

As you can tell, I don't do gross, gory, garish Halloween stuff.  It's really disturbing to me how dark a lot of the commercial Halloween decorations are.  Maybe it's because I have young kids and theyr'e scared of that stuff, but even later on in life I can promise you that I will never have a bloody corpse with a hatchet in its head coming up out of my front lawn.  Yuck.

     

This is Eliza several years ago, sporting my favorite costume (so far).  I took 4 pair of striped hose, cut the legs off 2 pair, stuffed the legs and attached them to black elastic loops for the middle of the spider, and used the "panty" part of one pair for her head.  I cut a circle in one side and tied knots in the leg part.  The stripes on her arms are still attached to eachother so they don't fall down; I just cut a big hole out of the crotch so her head will fit through and it doesn't show underneath her black leotard.

 

And there's my little pink striped bug, happy as can be!  Those extra spider legs continue to delight the kids during dress-up time.

I know that Walmart is selling striped tights like these this year, so if you're feeling buggy, go for it!

I'll have more Halloween posts later on, of course, as I make more things - I just thought I'd celebrate the first day of October with a little (happy) Halloween spirit!

Comments

[Sunny]

That is the cutest costume!!! I love it. You are too creative for your own good!!

[Rachel]

That cracked me up until you mentioned that you'd spent Christmas at the beach before, then it made perfect 6 yr old sense!

[Heffalump]

I think living there would drive me crazy. We love living here at the beach in Beautiful Oregon...and we love that only a few people come to the beach in the winter and we have it mostly to ourselves. Living in a land of eternal summer would not be fun to me!