Halloween 2014 has come and gone. Children everywhere are still munching on chocolatey or fruity treats they worked so hard gathering last week. This year my husband and I live in a beautiful 1896 Victorian house in a historic district in a small town near Norfolk, Virginia. Sadly we turned out to be the only house on our street that did any real decorating or handed out any candy. We had about 20 kids (counting a group of 8 kids that stopped by twice...yes I realized they'd already stopped by, but I also realized I needed to unload all the candy I could). By comparison, when we lived in Northern Virginia, we had about 40-50 kids on average each year. That's okay though, I would have decorated even if we had zero kids show up.
For this Halloween, I added a new feature to go with my traditional carved pumpkins. I try to do at least 1-2 Jack-o-Lanterns every year, and some years I get expressive and do three. I was limited to 2 pumpkins this year, so I decided it would be fun to purchase and dress up a full-sized skeleton. And because we live in a Victorian era house, I went with an early 1900s theme for the clothing. I shopped around at local Thrift stores for all the clothing items and accessories I needed. The best part is I donated all the items back to the store so they could resell them. I figured next year I'll do a different theme with the skeleton.
I was happy with the final results:
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| The Old Victorian Lady and Her Kitty |
I was also happy with my creative expressions: the skeletal lady is wearing earrings. How are they staying on? Magic! And her drink is red wine vinegar. I figured if she was sitting there long enough to skeletonize, her red wine would have turned to vinegar! Yes, sometimes I crack myself up.
In past years, I've done some fancy Jack-o-lanterns with elaborate carvings. This year I injured my shoulder so carving fancy faces wasn't in the cards. I figured I'd go with more traditional pumpkins instead:
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| The Surly Jack |
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| The Happy Jack |
I also created some additional Halloween ambiance by using candles on the stairs leading to the front porch. The final result was very satisfying:
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| Candles on the porch stairs |
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| The whole Halloween Package |
While I was a little bummed at the lack of trick-or-treaters, I had a lot of fun with the creative process of decorating for the ghoulish holiday. Who knows what kind of theme my brain will create for next year! Until then, happy candy eating.
