Pulling out the Boo-tiful Things

Last week was hot.  Crazy hot.  Record-breaking hot.  Miserably hot.  We all felt grateful when the sun slipped below the horizon and a chill fell upon the house, and I marveled at how warm the floors felt underfoot even after 10 p.m. as the house held onto the day’s furnace blast.  I laughed at myself for thinking I’d enjoyed my last swims in the pool for the year and enjoyed afternoons in and by the pool with my family and friends every single day.

It’s still warm, but pleasant, and signs of fall are creeping in.  With the flip of another calendar page, it was time to pull out the Halloween decorations.  The kids have been thinking about Halloween for weeks now, oohing and aahing over the magazines coming in with pumpkins and costumes on their covers, and sneaking gourds into my shopping carts as we run errands.  They’d have decorated weeks ago if it were up to them!

My favorite decorations for any holiday are the ones my children make.  Bunny crafted this alien candy corn creature a couple of weeks ago, and Carter made the milk jug pumpkin last year at preschool.  The paint in it is still wet, and I was able to shake it all over to recoat the inside.  :)

I can’t trust the special candles or candle holders to “Cole reaching height” this year, so they’re up on the mantle, which I have yet to fully change out… work in progress!  I also have the funky pumpkin she made in first grade as a clay project up there as well as a construction paper pumpkin from her time in preschool.  It’s very faded, but still smiling away.

Last year Carter begged for this skeleton to be added to the mix, along with the silly candy corn lights.  Neither is my cup of tea, but I firmly believe in coexistence, so Mr. Bones is hanging out for the next month.  The  kids love him, and I am thinking I may keep enough gallon milk jugs out of the recycling bin to make him a larger friend, as seen HERE.  It’s all a work in progress, and who knows what we’ll end up making as I encourage everyone to edit their super long lists of must-dos and start thinking about a party for a certain little guy I know who is turning one whole hand old!  He wants the theme to be Halloween!  :)