An October Saturday

Today was a nice way to spend an early October Saturday. It rained a little on and off all day, and the cool, damp weather is so crisp and refreshing. It feels great. I've had the back door, and several bedroom windows, open all day. I look out at the back deck and notice how many dead leaves already cover it. When I walked down to the barn to feed the horse and get the newspaper early this morning, it was so over cast and misty that it seemed like winter. I looked down the windy street towards the houses on the hills in the distance, and I thought of how soon the holidays would be here, and how those hills would be glowing with Christmas lights. It's such a beautiful sight. It always seems strange to me when the holidays finally come around again. It's hard to believe that a whole year has already gone by. Aside from all the chores and errands that I did today, I also made some Halloween cookies. I got some ghost, cat, and pumpkin cookie cutters a month or so ago, and I finally got around to using them. I got some orange frosting and black icing and made little jack-o-lantern cookies. It was a pretty nice day to enjoy the wonderful October weather, and relax and do some fun, Halloween-related activities. I think tonight I will start carving my other foam pumpkin. One of my favorite Halloween movies is coming on soon, and what better way to get into the Halloween spirit than carving a pumpkin while watching a Halloween movie?? There is almost nothing better than that. :)

October, at last

So it is October now. The waiting is over. Our favorite season is finally here, and our favorite holiday is only in a matter of days. It's strange how I wait anxiously all year long for this time of year , thinking and dreaming about Halloween, and all the exciting things I'm going to do to celebrate it. Then, when it finally comes around, I feel like it got here so suddenly that I don't have enough time to do everything I wanted to do to prepare for it. That always bums me out. I love almost nothing more than to celebrate this time of year. Things have not been great lately, though, and I am finding that a lot of things that I had looked forward to are sadly not going to happen. I am hoping that this, my most favorite month out of the year, will bring me out of the awful funk I've been in for several months now.

I love Halloween images. I search the 'Net all throughout the year searching for them. One of my favorites are the ones of glowing jack-o-lanterns. I found some cool images this morning that I thought were worthy of adding to this blog, as a way of welcoming in October. (See below.)

Some new additions...

I was at Ross today, and they had their Halloween stuff on sale. I was able to get a few cool little things to add to my collection. I got a tall pillar candle from Hauntville Witches' Brew. It has black and orange stripes, and the scent is called 'Pumpkin Fright'. It's a really wicked looking candle. I gotta' go back and get one in the smaller size, too. Even the tag looks creepy, and it has a little black spider hanging from it. I even love the smell.

They also had a really cool candle holder that I had to have. It's two skeleton hands holding a glass tea light candle holder. I'd like to go back and get one or two more of them. I also picked out a jack-o-lantern soap dispenser for the bathroom. Yes, I even put decorations in the bathroom! ;)
I already have an orange bubble light with a witch and a black cat in there, and also a candle holder with a haunted house design. It looks so cool when it's lit! I'm not going to want to take this stuff down after Halloween is over. I usually keep up at least a few little things just 'cuz I'm such a nut for spooky stuff. I'd like to keep some of these candles around, and maybe even the skeleton candle holder. Now seems to be a good time to buy Halloween stuff, since so many places already have their stuff on sale. Christmas is beginning to take over, and while I love Christmas, I'm not ready to see all the Halloween stuff disappear yet. It is always kind of a sad day when that happens.

Welcome, Fall

So, today is officially the first day of Fall. How wonderful. The mornings have been quite chilly lately, and more and more leaves are falling from the trees and covering the ground. Today is the first day that I am actually wearing a sweater! I love when I go from wearing tank tops and t-shirts to long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, and jackets. I've always loved Fall clothing.

We were putting out some more Fall/Halloween decorations last night in our living room. We bought one of those animated ceramic figurines from the 'Spooky Town' collection at Michael's, and put it on top of an antique piece of furniture. It's called the Full Moon Apothecary, and it makes spooky sounds and plays an eerie tune, while a green witch flies over the rooftop making an evil cackle. It's too cool. Then, we draped a Fall garland with leaves and corn husks all around it. We put some other things on some of the other furniture, too. I'd like to go back to Micheal's and get one or two more of the 'Spooky Town' figurines while they're on sale. I still have quite a bit more I'd love to do, but don't know if I'll actually get around to it all. I started to put some multi-colored Halloween lights outside around our doorway last night. I also finally found a carving pattern kit that I liked, and I plan to begin carving two of my foam pumpkins this week. If all goes as planned, I hope to have them done by the weekend. I'd like to grab a few more of them since they're on sale, too. I always carve a few real pumpkins, but I wait until a few days before Halloween. I like to enjoy the wonderful smell of a candlelit jack-o-lantern as long as I can, which isn't very long, unfortunately. At least I also have Thanksgiving to look forward to, though. Awhile back, I found a turkey pattern, and I carved a pumpkin with it once. It was one of the most difficult patterns I ever did, but it looked fantastic! I had never thought of having a jack-o-lantern on our Thanksgiving table, but it added so much to the decor. In fact, it was everyone's favorite. No one could believe it was a real pumpkin, or that I had done the carving. At least it gives me a chance to enjoy having a jack-o-lantern around for a little while longer once Halloween is over.

Halloween merrymaking

I went back to Michael's today and got some more stuff to decorate the inside of the house with. Below are some of the neat little things I brought home with me:

Fall-colored garlands to drape around the dining room table;
Halloween candle holders, and some LED tea lights to use with them;
A Halloween bubble light with a ghost and a black cat;
'Dreadful Manor', from the 'Spooky Town' collection;
A metal sign that reads, "Welcome Witches and Ghouls", which I hung outside next to the front door;
An Evil Scarecrow figurine by 'Spooky Town' that has a jack-o-lantern head that lights up. I put him in my 'Great Pumpkin' pumpkin patch.

I also put up a strand of ghost lights across the top of our entertainment center, right above two ceramic pumpkins that light up. I felt it wouldn't be right to be decorating for Halloween without Jack Skellington being a part of it, so I put on my Special Edition 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' dvd while I was decorating. To top it off, I was beginning to smell the delicious chocolate Goblin Bars that were almost finished baking in the oven. I found the recipe for them on the back of an M&M's bag. They sounded too yummy to resist trying, so I thought tonight would be a great time to make them while I was busy doing my Halloween merrymaking, as I call it. I am still looking for some new pumpkin carving patterns to use on the foam pumpkins that I bought recently. The ones I saw at Michael's and Target just didn't impress me much. I think I might get some online from Zombie Pumpkins, since he has so many amazing creations to choose from. I still have more to do before I feel ready for the Big Night, but I'm feeling excited about how things look so far. I love all the creepy decor and glowing faces all over the house.

And now for those Goblin Bars....

Some poems for the Dark Season

Not only do I really love stories about Fall and Halloween, but I also love poetry about it. It seems kind of hard to find good poems about Halloween, but when something catches my attention, I never forget it. Such is the case with the following poems. They tug at my heart because of my love of this blessed season, and because of how much I adore Halloween.

'Theme in Yellow', by Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

'Under the Harvest Moon', by Carl Sandburg

When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

'Autumn', by A. Ferdinand Herold

DEAR, do you see the autumn fruits a-lying?
Listen, what slow, monotonous flute is sighing
A song of parting through the shivering wold?
O the song of the flute is pale, the tune so old
Its passing seems to wither all the leaves.
The sky has lost now its diaphanous eves
Which charmed your eyes not very long ago.
No gladioli now nor lilies blow,
And see the rose-leaves on the garden grass,
The last flower that the autumn slays, alas!
Dear, can you hear the falling of the fruit?
Into the night sounds, weeps the woodland flute,
Into the night that veils our happy path,
Into the night that all things shadowed hath.

Carving that jack-o-lantern!

One of my favorite things about Halloween is the carving of the jack-o-lantern! I used to love to do just the traditional type of design, with the triangle eyes, nose and mouth. I still love almost nothing more than a really sinister expression on a glowing pumpkin, but I've also become very fond of non-traditional designs that you get from, say, Pumpkin Masters. I've seen some really awesome works of art, and have done some pretty darn good ones myself, if I may say so! ;) I'm always on the look out for something new that's super spooky. Some time ago, I was doing an online search for just this sort of thing when I came across Zombie Pumpkins. (www.zombiepumpkins.com) It's dedicated to practically any kind of carving design you can think of (movies, musicians, actors, TV, etc.). They not only have Halloween-style designs, but also ones for summer and other events. Seeing as how I love scarecrows, one of my favorites is Patch Master. I believe you are asked to pay a very small fee for some of the more elaborate designs, but I think it's worth it. They have some free ones as well. What I also like about the site is that you can add your own photo of your special Zombie Pumpkins creation to the customers' gallery. One of these years I am going to add one of mine.

If you love carving pumpkins as much as I do, I recommend that you check out this site! It has a lot of cool stuff to look at, and if nothing else, it's a fun way to kill some time if you need to!