Hallowe'en 2026

Truly a bizarre night:  Hallowe'en was warm and there was no rain and very little wind!!!  This is the only October 31st that we can remember when we were not fighting the elements or brushing off snow before hauling in the wet and wind-whipped decorations!  

It was spook-tacular and we looked great...

In the end we only had 41 trick 'r treaters, which I think was due to the fact that it was a Saturday.  It was a good thing I started doubling the chocolate handouts early on or we would have been left with far too much!!!  There were some great costumes, police and firefighters were the obvious favorites... I did not have even one Spiderman, though.  

The next night we set up to receive the invited dead...

Our Day of the Dead altar, with treats for humans, dogs and even the hamsters and birds that were part of the family.

It is something that is really missing in our culture:  to set aside one night to remember our lost loved ones and think about them, share a treat and honour what they meant to us.  

It's a wonderful opportunity to reflect on what's important and be grateful for all the good times, past, present and (hopefully) future!

I hope you enjoyed Hallowe'en and had some spooky fun and that the Day of the Dead offered you a renewed sense of peace and belonging.

Bump in the Night: Hallowe'en 2025

It was a dark and stormy night... well, it's true.  The wind was terrible and we had to take in some of the decorations before they got ruined.  I didn't have much out on the lawn this year and the weather didn't permit adding much more.  Of course, we were still decorated more than most houses and looked good but I wish Mother Nature would be a little kinder to us spooks!  

Anyway, it was cold, very windy and started to rain again around 7:30.  We still had 59 trick or treaters, which is about normal.  There were some imaginative costumes!

The next day, our Day of the Dead celebration was sombre and beautiful, and there were treats laid out for everyone.  The dogs were restless, so I think we did have some visitors.  

Before Hallowe'en, I did needle felt a rather special fellow, a new addition to my perpetual spooky decor.  He started out as a rather large, white blob:

I used polyester fibrefil because I still have bags of the stuff and it felts super fast.

I then began carving out and shaping his face, building on the nose and cutting out the eye holes.

I wanted a yellow rind so I poked on a lovely bright yellow fine Merino where the orange flesh would have been cut away on a real pumpkin.

Then it was time for the orange fibre!  Gosh, I love the shading!!  It's "Orange" Brecknock Hill Cheviot from akara.

I went through my stash of pumpkin stems and found this one that suited him well.  I drilled a hole into the base and screwed in a skewer.  The skewer was then jammed into the top of the pumpkin (with the help of an awl) and it's quite secure.

It took some time to cover the entire pumpkin with the orange and in the meantime I played around with what I could use for eyes.  I had bought ping pong balls for another project but now they seemed the perfect choice for this guy!  I added small black plastic Teddy Bear eyes with posts and used the holes in the posts to attach strings that could be used to secure the eyes... but they are in the sockets pretty good and it's fun to move the eyes around so I didn't attach the strings.

But he was looking too friendly for my liking... what to do?

I started to experiment with colors and this combination seemed to bring out the creepy in my Jack!

Along with some pumpkin carving plastic teeth and the real stem, Bump became a first class Jack o'Lantern!  

We felt very safe on Hallowe'en with Bump guarding our house.  

Lost and Found

If you've been a reader of my blog, you know I love Hallowe'en.  Sooner or later, I was obviously going to felt a skull, right?  Of course!

I was inspired by this image shared on "All Things Halloween" on Facebook.  Sadly no credit was given for the image, so if you know who the artist is please let me know.  

My sister had given me some lovely, dyed pieces of felt that looked beautiful on their own so I wanted to use them in a way that would show them off.  This was the perfect project!

The dyed felt pieces are from Etsy seller Steph's Crafty Bits.  I cut the green and brown pieces to form the background and needle felted them to a plain piece of felt for stability.

  Isn't the green lovely, it's a forest without having to add anything extra!

I printed a second copy of the image to cut out the skull as a template...

From natural white prefelt purchased from Saira at Fibrecraft, I cut out the skull shape...

 and gently pulled away the eyes, etc..., as I needle felted it to the background.

A book on painting advised to always do the darkest parts first, so I did the darkest areas in black.

Using a Blue Faced Leicester fibre in shades of grey from The Spinning Spider, I filled in the dark spaces...

This took some time and trial and error, but it was amazing how the skull became more and more real!  I used a little very pale yellow to highlight parts of the bone that got a little more light.  Shadowing around the skull also helped.

Plus a little green on the teeth and chin and it was done!  

Then the foreground:  I liked the contrast of the little pink flowers so I added them in two shades with a few different colors of green. 

Framing forced me to cut away quite a bit from the sides but I had a lovely 8 x 10 frame (no glass) that I wanted to use.

And it was done!

Wow, what a thrill!  What a hush!  This was at a level I didn't think I was quite ready for so I'm very pleased with the result.  What a confidence booster!

Hallowe'en 2022

What a night!  Of course it had to rain, after a dry Autumn, but it was still a great Hallowe'en with 61 trick or treaters at our door.  (That seems to be about the average number, no matter the weather or the day of the week or COVID.) 

We had all the decorations up this year, it was fun to unearth all my old buddies!  All the cemetery stones stood proud on the front lawn and invited the ghouls and goblins to walk on up the driveway.

A ghost swayed at the end of the drive...

Our front door was haunted by an assortment of skeleton animals, body parts and Jack o'Lanterns...

which looked even better in the dark!

Our garage door was a masterpiece, I'm very happy we could use the still-beautiful mums and geraniums for a very Day of the Dead inspired display.

(The graveyard scene was held in place on the garage doors with fridge magnets!)

And so our October ended and Hallowe'en was laid to rest for another year.  

But of course Hallowe'en is never really over at our place... if you listen the leaves sound like scurrying rats and the wind is whispering... 

Pre-Hallowe'en 2020

Last year we moved in October and I practically skipped Hallowe'en; I promised Sam (see the movie Trick 'r Treat) and myself that 2020 would be different and I would unpack EVERYTHING.  And so it begins... 

Of course, Mother Nature is setting the tone and presenting a stunning, traditional launch to my favorite season.  Take a look at those colors!

WOW!  

While some stores seem to have cancelled their Hallowe'en offerings and jumped right into Christmas, I did find a good selection at the Dollarama and other dollar stores.  Zehrs also had some nice skellies, like the dog with the bone and the hummingbird:

And I'm baking, Day of the Dead Bread to start (getting the hardest done first!). Here's the dough before it went into the oven, lovely!  The smell of fresh baking bread with orange zest is something else on a cool October day!

And although COVID19 will butcher trick-or-treating, that doesn't mean we can't have fun this Hallowe'en!  We are decorating, and it looks like some of our neighbours are getting a head start too!  

And here's our house so far:  pumpkin lights and the "oldies" in the windows with one small ghost in the garden bed.  

More to come!  I'm really enjoying opening all the boxes and finding forgotten treasures!  

Halloween 2016

As that other Holiday approaches far too quickly, I want to rewind just a wee bit and share some Hallowe'en fun with you.  Elora does Halloween in style with its Monster March parade but this time I want to share with you some of the decorations we got to see our neighbours scare up.

From the elegant to the subtle...

to the just for fun, Elora let its spirits shine.

I had to laugh when I saw this display:  is the abandoned bike and shovel supposed to be there?  I love the gruesome stories you could make up with these elements!!

However, our haunted friends in Aboyne took the cake with their skeleton horses and carriage display!

The skelly horses each even had their own water buckets!

And here was our offering:

 44 children dared to come up to our door on what was one of the most pleasant and mild Hallowe'ens I can remember.  We were expecting more ghosts and goblins to drop in... so there's lots of leftover goodies for our guests to enjoy!

As the light started to fade, the lanterns were lit and and the 2 skeleton dogs were added to the cemetery. 

 

 Howler was close enough to the walkway that he'd start howling when excited children went by, perfect!

And now all the creepy critters have been packed away (well, never all... there's always a bit of Hallowe'en at our house)...  

Until next year!