The Day-After Halloween Pumpkin

Our jack-o-lantern enjoys a warm and dry November 1, after spending Halloween evening lit-up on our front stoop, watching over the bowls of candy (which we leave on the front steps while we're out trick-or-treating). 

For the past several years, my eldest son has requested that we model our jack-o-lantern's face on the title character in Nora S. Unwin's 1953 book Proud Pumpkin, which I highlight in this post. 

Here are some of that book's excellent illustrations, showing the "round and bold and glorious" jack-o-lantern as it appeared on Halloween, but also as it was subsequently abandoned and allowed to decay in the woodshed:

We brought our jack-o-lantern inside before we went to bed last night, sparing it a soaking from the forecasted rain shower. 

Still, it will inevitably suffer a fate similar to Proud Pumpkin's. Soon we'll take the pumpkin out to a mound of dirt and brush in our woods, and there it will sit until the shell gradually rots and composts itself, becoming part of the mound, as our other pumpkins have done since we moved here.

Thankful for the small measure of light this pumpkin provided, and overall for another joyous Halloween to share with loved ones. See you next year!

Party Favors

My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew throw a fabulous Halloween party just about every year, and the one they hosted last Sunday evening was no exception.

Their house—decorated to the hilt with candles, pumpkins, holiday lights, cardboard skeletons and ghosts, and a homemade model of a haunted mansion—was warm, cozy, and inviting. What a joyful time we had talking, laughing, and watching the children, who ranged in age from about 10 months to 10 years.

My nephew had set up a haunted house in the basement, with cobwebs, a skeleton, a ghost, a blacklight, spooky music, and phosphorescent dots all over—thanks to a poked and shaken glow stick. Out in the front yard, stood a cluster of several weathered-looking, styrofoam gravestones.

After bowls of delicious chili for supper, there were treats to eat, such as cake, brownies, and several varieties of candy.

The children took home even more treats. They each got a treat bag that contained a sheet of stickers, two monster fingers, two sets of fangs, a bat ring, a stackable push pencil (familiar to any child of the 1980s), an eraser, a small drawing pad, a glow stick, and a "boo" swirly straw. There were also "popcorn hands" to take—clear plastic gloves filled with popcorn, with a candy corn at each fingertip. Lastly, each child got a small pumpkin, which they could have carved during the party.

Thank you sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for your generosity, and for providing a whole lot of Halloween fun!

(Updated Nov. 4, 2024) 

The Halloween Aisle, Part 2

It's a given that Walmart, Party City, and other big stores are going to have a wider variety of Halloween costumes than your local drug or grocery store will. However, when I was a kid, the drug store was usually our first stop when time came for costume shopping.

I wrote about this last year, in a post about the Halloween aisle of our local Walgreens. While heading out on some errands this morning with my eldest son, I decided to stop by there again, so that he could check out the Halloween aisle for himself.

The offerings were quite similar, particularly in the scarcity of costume items—though I admit that it's late in October and that there may have been more on the racks a month ago. Today there were only two masks: a skull face and an alien. 

There were several different packages of Halloween makeup—tubes of fake blood and creme makeup, oil crayon makeup, and a "Deluxe Makeup Kit" that included various pots and tubes of grease and creme makeup, as well as fake blood, "tooth out" and "fake scar," and several applicators. 

Hanging near the makeup kits were some clothing accessories—witch gloves, a pumpkin beanie, and a few different pairs of Halloween socks. Underneath those were decorations such as light-up jack-o-lanterns and strands of holiday lights, and also some classic-looking jack-o-lantern candy pails.

Other decorations included signs, skeletons, witches, ghosts, spiders, and cobwebs.

Some of the items weren't easily identifiable. I did spot some treat bags—though not the cool paper ones my mom used to get. 

The sweets heavily outweighed the costume and decoration offerings, though marked-up Halloween candy undoubtedly brings the bigger profit. I always enjoy seeing the holiday packaging.

The store had a better—though still slim—selection of costumes last year, but overall, the offerings were about the same. Not great, but certainly better than nothing. Next time, I might try CVS, less than a block away, or the Kroger across the street, to see what they have in stock.