Happy All Hallows Day
I am exhausted for all sorts of reasons, some of them having to do with Halloween. This post will just cover Halloween.
It wasn't a bad year. The snowfall from Saturday left me thinking we wouldn't get as many kids because of the colder temperatures and snow, but hey! It warmed up into the 40s, most of the snow melted, and I ran out of all my candy a third of the way through Trick 'r Treating (I bought 150 pieces). Lucky my neighbor Dawn was hanging out with me and we gave kids individual Starbursts her husband had squirreled away (they live on an intersection and get 4x the amount of kids I do).
Anyway, the night before and yesterday were for putting together finishing touches, which was mostly pumpkin carving. There were 9 skull-like pumpkins in all, and many, many people asked if they were real because they'd never seen white pumpkins before.
Some people also mistook me for an animatronic or statue, which is a weird sort of compliment/insult (I look good enough to be fake? Or fake enough to be unreal?). Then again. I've gotten used to the random camera flashes as people take pictures of me without warning, or when someone points a flashlight toward me. I do tend to stand very still, especially when I'm next to the space heater.
I think my costume was confusing, too. I told people I was a ghost, but almost everyone else settled on "bride" or "corpse bride" because of the spiders (only one little boy flat out told me, and I got to freak out and say "What? WHERE?!") One mother said I was a fairy who might grant her Snow White a wish (I handed her a Tootsie Roll Pop). The weirdest had to be "High Priestess," but then again the eventual focal point I set up to show off the pumpkins did look like a throne or altar. I'm not sure if it was unintentional.
People were really impressed by the yard decorations. They were pointing up at the windows to make their kids notice the silhouettes and a lot of people got a kick out of the flying bat and red-glowing eyes of the spider I hung from the branch overhanging our sidewalk (so you have to go under it, MWAHAHAHAHA).
At one point there was a crowd from one end of our sidewalk to the other, just looking up at the house while their kids formed an orderly, constantly moving line to get candy. It was staggering to me.
One woman dressed as a homemade gargoyle kneeled before me, hailing me as the Queen of Halloween and telling me her family makes an "exodus" every year to my street to see the decorations. Other parents will tell me they look forward to it, but no one's kneeled before. Some kids remember me on their own from year to year, and say hey to me by name.
I even ran into the Colonel's wife, who used my tree design for their yard. She was very complimentary in a way that said, "I really love your work, please don't be mad that I traced." Hey, you gotta learn somehow.
I wanted to get some better photos before I do a spam photo post, so please enjoy this preview of me in costume on the house steps:
If people ask if the skeleton is real, I tell them he was an old friend of mine.
Now I'm sitting here watching the Twilight Zone, enjoying the fire I started, and eating chocolate I've had in the fridge since the summer. Mmm, partially-frozen Twix.
It wasn't a bad year. The snowfall from Saturday left me thinking we wouldn't get as many kids because of the colder temperatures and snow, but hey! It warmed up into the 40s, most of the snow melted, and I ran out of all my candy a third of the way through Trick 'r Treating (I bought 150 pieces). Lucky my neighbor Dawn was hanging out with me and we gave kids individual Starbursts her husband had squirreled away (they live on an intersection and get 4x the amount of kids I do).
Anyway, the night before and yesterday were for putting together finishing touches, which was mostly pumpkin carving. There were 9 skull-like pumpkins in all, and many, many people asked if they were real because they'd never seen white pumpkins before.
Some people also mistook me for an animatronic or statue, which is a weird sort of compliment/insult (I look good enough to be fake? Or fake enough to be unreal?). Then again. I've gotten used to the random camera flashes as people take pictures of me without warning, or when someone points a flashlight toward me. I do tend to stand very still, especially when I'm next to the space heater.
I think my costume was confusing, too. I told people I was a ghost, but almost everyone else settled on "bride" or "corpse bride" because of the spiders (only one little boy flat out told me, and I got to freak out and say "What? WHERE?!") One mother said I was a fairy who might grant her Snow White a wish (I handed her a Tootsie Roll Pop). The weirdest had to be "High Priestess," but then again the eventual focal point I set up to show off the pumpkins did look like a throne or altar. I'm not sure if it was unintentional.
People were really impressed by the yard decorations. They were pointing up at the windows to make their kids notice the silhouettes and a lot of people got a kick out of the flying bat and red-glowing eyes of the spider I hung from the branch overhanging our sidewalk (so you have to go under it, MWAHAHAHAHA).
At one point there was a crowd from one end of our sidewalk to the other, just looking up at the house while their kids formed an orderly, constantly moving line to get candy. It was staggering to me.
One woman dressed as a homemade gargoyle kneeled before me, hailing me as the Queen of Halloween and telling me her family makes an "exodus" every year to my street to see the decorations. Other parents will tell me they look forward to it, but no one's kneeled before. Some kids remember me on their own from year to year, and say hey to me by name.
I even ran into the Colonel's wife, who used my tree design for their yard. She was very complimentary in a way that said, "I really love your work, please don't be mad that I traced." Hey, you gotta learn somehow.
I wanted to get some better photos before I do a spam photo post, so please enjoy this preview of me in costume on the house steps:
If people ask if the skeleton is real, I tell them he was an old friend of mine.
Now I'm sitting here watching the Twilight Zone, enjoying the fire I started, and eating chocolate I've had in the fridge since the summer. Mmm, partially-frozen Twix.