Halloween – Melrose Mom-ing

Pumpkins, Mums and the PTO

Oh my!

There was a Pumpkin and Mums sale up at #1 Son’s school today.

Last year I was completely confused as to why they might potentially be auctioning off fellow mothers…

It turns out the hus-creature was also, as he checked – ‘mums = chrysanthemums

Which was a relief I have to admit 🤣😂

There was also hot apple cider sadly, (or perhaps not given my liver still seems to be crying after Friday), not alcoholic, and ring donuts and…. a petting zoo.

I’ve made a vow this year to actually do more of the after/outside of school activities and so I insisted we head up.

First came the petting zoo:

Sadly, #1 Son was not keen, but TT was enthralled. So I sent my boys off to forage for pumpkins – but sadly not mums as it turns out that they are highly toxic to cats and dogs, so no plant for me – while TT went in with the animals.

It wasn’t completely successful as she has actually listened to me about not petting strange animals it seems, and took a lot of convincing that it was ok to do so. There was a lot of “Mummy no, I not touch animals” but she had fun.

Then came… pumpkin decorating:

Both kids had so much fun. I had to intervene a little when #1 Son kept trying to attach stickers to his sister’s pumpkin (and believe me, she was not impressed by that!), and my role was “Chief re-attacher of pen lids”, but they both had so much fun.

Also TT was hilarious – she was most definitely choosing her own pen colours and would not be swayed.

Serious artist is serious

She would not relinquish that red marker.

Then it came time to leave. She would not be parted from her precious pumpkin. She had a full on level 10 meltdown when we left it in the boot of the car to, you know, dry and set.

Her precious:

Both children decorated a pumpkin of course:

And we had to let her have it on the way home from lunch, so she cradled it like a teddy bear:

Such pride many happy 🤣😂❤️💗

But then once we returned what were we to do? I had visions of her sleeping with the darned thing. However through some judicious use of lollipop based bribery, to prevent her from sitting outside all afternoon, both pumpkins now have pride of place on our front porch:

But this does mean that for once I have contributed to the Halloween decorations hurrah!

All Hallows’ Eve

Stateside is just magical.

No really, it was amazing.

#1 Son had a party and parade at school. He has worn not one, not two, but three costumes today:

Pumpkin Ghost – he made this himself, consisting of his long sleeved jack o lantern t-shirt and red trousers (they had to be red)
Dinosaur costume – a National History Museum official one for the school party. They were not allowed masks, makeup, blood or weapons.
The Blue Power Ranger – for Trick or Treating with me and TT.

TT was Harley Quinn – because daddy couldn’t find “Demon Spawn From The Hell Pits” in a 2T.

The shoes didn’t make it home 😐🙃

So the city of Melrose ran a Halloween Trick or Treat event 15:30 – 17:00. So given it gets dark, and TT is still so little we did the full run. Local businesses along Main Street were handing out candy and doing activities with the kids.

So. Many. Costumes. I had dressed up as Cleopatra for the heck of it, and I wasn’t the only adult in costume. Not only that, but one of the staff from the local Mexican cantina was wearing the same costume!

So. Much. Candy.

No really, this is TT’s haul:

With a shout out to Aunty Diana for the bags, which had TT shouting “Kitty cat” a lot.

#1 Son (rather sensibly) disappeared his haul to his room as soon as he got home. He has slightly more than her, but she soon got very good at shouting “my turn” whenever she saw him get candy.

She charmed extra out of one business by saying “ta” when she was handed chocolate.

We had so much fun, honestly. It was a perfect afternoon, beautiful weather, fun activities – there were at least two haunted houses and both kids loved it.

We initially planned to go out as a family later, but #1 Son was overwhelmed after all the people and noise (and I wasn’t far behind him if I’m honest), it was very close to TT’s bedtime, and daddy had a new shoes blister; so we decided to put a pin in it for this year.

Sadly we have only had one set of house-to-house Trick or Treater’s but hey ho.

Hallowe’en Jack

Has vomited all over our front porch 😂🤣😂🤣

Hallowe’en is a huge deal here it seems!

I actually think it’s really cool how excited everyone is.

TT loves that scarecrow thing:

Unfortunately (though predictably) she views it as a punching bag. It loses.

And our neighbours are not alone:

That is all from one front lawn, and it has been on display since early September

🙀😱🙀😱🙀😱😂🤣😂😭😂

I see it every time I go to get my nails done.

Oh these are the offerings from the last two visits:

This was three weeks ago. And I had to take photos of my natural nails as I’m just so bloody proud of how well I’ve done.

To give you an idea dear audience, this visit coincided with the anniversary of me deciding to give a bit of a crap about my appearance, just a tiny one: