Happy Halloween! I hope all my friends and family back home are dressed up at work and have fun plans to celebrate tonight. I hope you have had to buy lots of candy for the little trick-or-treaters tonight. We always made sure that we bought candy that we liked just in case we didn’t have a large turnout.
A few friends have sent me photos of their costumes and I love them! Keep sharing! I will admit that late this afternoon I started getting really homesick. I’ve spent my day buried in the chore of bookkeeping so maybe that is why I am wishing I was dressed up for Halloween instead. I’ve never been a big Halloween party person, but I do love seeing how creative people are with costumes. And how cute the little kids are when they come trick or treating.
I have great childhood memories of Halloween. My sister Vicky and I went trick-or-treating one year with our pillowcases to collect lots of candy. And boy did we. We must have had enough Halloween candy to get us to Easter!
Our parents and our friend’s parents made it a fun time to be a kid. As a child we lived in a townhouse in Aurora, Illinois for many years. There were six families that lived in the building. The kids were best friends as were the parents. One year they had a party for us kids in the basement of one of the homes. My Dad was an incredible story creator and teller. He wrote two stories for that night. One was “How to be a first-class Ghoul.” The lights were turned down low and the other parents passed around items for us to touch and feel that related to the story. My Dad was behind a curtain telling the story. Next came a story called “Agatha and Amelia Heritage.” A story of two sisters that lived in an old mansion where lots of creepy things took place. He had written the story to include several names and places that we kids knew. In fact, the story was to have taken place at the address of the basement we were in. Thankfully our parents recorded these stories and I still have the original stories that my Dad had written. What treasures. I have listened to the cassette almost every year and today I read the story aloud to Bob doing my best imitation of how my Dad read it all those years ago.
I have photos of our parents enjoying a Halloween party of their own during that time in Aurora. I need to share those photos with my childhood friends whose parents are also in the photos. It reminds me of their fun-loving spirits that they instilled in us.
These days trick-or-treating seems to take place more in safe places such as malls and churches and clubs. How sad our society has become I think.
Our friends Sondra and Paul in North Carolina have a great tradition to make the night fun for kids. They have a Halloween party in their front yard for the neighborhood kids. They project movies on a big white sheet in their front yard. The kids mostly want them to just show “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” over and over and over and over. Of course, there is candy. How fun is that? This is what being a kid is all about. These are special memories that they will remember for many years to come. Way to go Sondra and Paul!!!
I passed on my Halloween decorations when we moved here. My sister Vicky got my favorite decoration. Cat’s eyes on plastic that you hang in a window. Here are a couple of photos of them at our home a couple of years ago.
They look great in her house now. Glad to know they went to a good home. 🙂
I did carve some fun the other day. Here is how my Jack-o-lantern turned out. We have named him Harvey.
Hope you all have a Happy Halloween! Dress up! Even if just a little bit. Heck, even I have my glow-in-the-dark ghost earrings on. Make it fun for the little kids!
The Winery Woman 