Goodbye Great Pumkin:( ....See you Next Year

Now that Halloween is behind us (and it was a great Halloween this year as far as weather goes) it's on to the next major Canadian holiday. Christmas! Halloween and Christmas have to run a pretty close tie at our house and we might even decorate a little more for Halloween come to think of it. And I think if you'd ask the average kid here which was more fun, Christmas or Halloween, it would be a pretty close tie as well, as they are very much enjoyed events here. I mean who wouldn't love an all night costume party where you get to pretend to be something you're not, running around in the dark........ Now that's just FUN 'on steroids' isn't' it?....Well it is if you're a kid......or a kid at heart. There is no doubt that Halloween has become more commercialized here and people are moving away from putting together homemade costumes and more are purchasing off the rack costumes.......I think it's really sad when peoples lives are too hectic to spend the time working on a project like this with their kids. But before we say goodbye to Halloween 2008, here's a few photos to share with you from our Halloween Day.

This is the pumpkin Ike Carved (I helped at times) from a free Pumpkin Masters pattern.
Here is Ike cleaning out the Pumpkin getting ready to carve it.

Trying on last years costume and giving it a spin.

These are some of the tomb stones decorating our entrance way.



More Stones...............

And some more.......................................We made these many years ago using Styrofoam insulation which we cut into the shape we wanted, then engraved them with funny but actual real epitaphs. We used a drawing package, but you could use word, to write the epitaph in full size. We printed out the writing and tacked it to the front of the stone and either melted it in with a soldering iron by burning through the paper and into the Styrofoam, or in later years using an exacto knife to cut through the paper and into the Styrofoam. The soldering iron method gave off what I'm sure were terribly unhealthy fumes so my preference now is using the exacto knife. You could also use a dremel tool, but it would raise a lot of dust that you would not want to inhale. After engraving, the engraved areas were painted with medium dark grey latex paint while the surface over the rest of the stone was painted with an off white since it's what we had at the time. Then we used spray paint meant to create a granite speckled finish and finished with a few coats of spray varnish. I've seen instructions to drill holes up into the bottom of the stones to place stakes in to attach them to the ground, but we have not bothered with this since we always put them in the dirt. We just bury them in a few inched of earth. Usually we set out wooden frames lined with landscaping fabric in the shape of a grave plot and put a few of them on the lawn piled with fresh earth to make a few fresh graves. But since this year was promising rain we opted not to.


This is a shot of the front of the house.



This is the front door and a shot of Ike's pumpkin. Behind the black curtains are skeletons and black lights.



Neighbours glow in the dark decoration.


Another Neighbours entrance way. That's Ike in his Turtwig costume going to the door.




This neighbour had a 100 lb pumpkin on their doorstep.
Out for a walk after Halloween and there were still some decorations up in the neighbourhood.