Oh its almost October, which means I am fast approaching my favorite month of the year as well as one of my favorite holidays. Granted Halloween is not a day that you get off or a day that you get to go and spend precious time with family and friends like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but its such a fun day! I know I love this holiday because of my mother's tireless decorating and all the work she'd always put into my costumes as a little kid.
About 2 weeks before the trick or treaters would come a knocking she and I would go down to the basement laundry room and find the box with our traditional decorations. We'd spend at least one entire day from right after breakfast to right before dad would get home from work putting up the spookiness. We had everything ranging from bats to spiders and ghosts that we'd cut out of construction paper and taped to the big front window which would of course highlight the jackolatern I'd carve the afternoon of Halloween. We would tape up the giant happy Frankenstein on the closet door at the top of the stairs to greet dad when he'd put his coat and hat away. And of course we had several positionable skeletons that I know mom had had for years and would tape the little ones to the window as well and the full grown person sized one to one side of the front door while a Happy Halloween banner decorated the other side.
After the paper decorations were up and that would generally take about half the day, we'd move on to best part... hanging spider webbing. I literally perfected the art form of stretching that silky cottony mass over objects, across windows, around every chandelier and light fixture in the house, and of course up and down both sides of the banister. By the time the sun started to set every square inch of available space would have some kind of Halloween decoration.
We would tweak a few things here and there over the up coming weeks of course each store we went to we'd look in the Halloween section for costume ideas, new face painting stuff, or a new spooky sounds tape that we could play when trick or treaters came to the door. Usually on the night of Halloween we'd have everything perfect, spooky music going, jackolatern carved and lit, candy sitting ready and waiting right by the door, most of the lights off in the house but the porch light on so kids knew they could knock. I swear even as a little kid I liked passing out candy as much as getting dressed up and going trick or treating myself. I loved seeing all the costumes, trying to figure out who was who behind what masks, and hearing "trick or treat" over and over again after the doorbell rang. Each year was a great experience.
And now here I sit, before the month of October even officially starts and I'm already excited. I've already figured out what costume I'm going to make to wear at the school (I'm going as Cassie the wonder Dalmatian, spots and all), already bought candy to pass out, and starting to make my own construction paper decorations to hang in my own front window. I have my spider webbing ready and waiting to be stretched and pulled into perfect webs. I wish I had a giant pumpkin to carve this year but there wasn't any kind of growing season around here this summer to make that happen, so I'll have to settle for finding a nice "little" pumpkin to carve and of course design my own pattern to carve into it that glorious Halloween afternoon. All I need to do is find a skeleton like mom had so I feel like all is right in the world and put it up two weeks before.
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