Halloween 2013

I'm very late posting this but have been busy since Halloween.  Halloween in my neighborhood is so much fun.  By the time October 31st rolls around we're finally out of the triple digits so everyone sits outside in their driveways to hand out candy and enjoy the relatively cool weather.  Everyone is so busy these days so it's a nice chance to catch up with some of the neighbors I don't get a chance to talk to often.  This year, I had probably around 125 -150 trick or treaters in all.  I handed out all 80 of the goody bags I had made up and then there were plenty of kids who were either too old or too young to be "sorted" so I had plenty of candy on hand for them as well.  Below are some pictures of Halloween decorations in the neighborhood.  Some I took while taking a walk the night before and some I took on Halloween in between groups of kids and when I went for a walk around the neighborhood after things slowed down.  

This is actually a large bush on which they arranged lights to look like a huge pumpkin.

This is the same house.  This is a really weird dog house type of thing with a fence around it.

This is also the same house as the two pictures above.  They really have some different types of decorations in their yard.

I think this is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in someone's yard.  Sometimes these "creepy" decorations come off as cheesy, but there's something about this that is just disturbing.  lol!  I was talking to my neighbor in whose yard it's in and I was telling him how disturbing I found it and he said it even creeped him out and he made it!

This is a view looking down the street.

These are the pumpkins I had on my porch this year.  The one on the left is a real one that I carved, and the one on the right is a ceramic pumpkin.

This is a picture of a wooden cross that's in the same neighbor's yard as that very disturbing decoration pictured above.  They also had a really rickety fence put up.

Also in the same yard as the creepy decoration.

Another shot of the creepiest decoration I've ever seen.

This guy goes overboard with the decorations every year and they usually have a haunted house as well but he didn't this year (something having to do with football).  You should see his house at Christmas!

Buh-bye triple digits!  People outside everywhere.

This thing startled the heck out of me.  I was standing in front of it not knowing that it is motion activated.  I suddenly felt (and heard!) a blast of air coming from that hole in its mouth.

This was really a bizarre decoration.  It's a huge crib with a bunch of really creepy looking babies hanging all over it.  

Hogwarts Halloween Goodie Bags

This year for Halloween I thought I'd put together a Hogwarts theme for the kiddos.  Over the course of about the past five years, I've made a number of Harry Potter related craft projects including a model of the castle that takes approximately 30-35 battery operated tealights to light up.  I've also made a Forbidden Forest, a little Hagrid's Hut, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, a Portable Swamp, and a Monster Book of Monsters (which was really a lot of fun to make).  I also made a "mountain" out of boxes for the castle.  They took so long to make because I would pull them out when I had a little bit of time here and there.  The castle also ended up being a much bigger project than I originally thought.  I ran out of time this weekend, but if I get the chance, I'll take pictures of all these projects and post them.  

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the goodie bags I put together for the kids.  

   

This is a picture of the card I made for the bags and because I made eighty of them, I started quite awhile ago.  They really didn't cost much to make as I had most of the materials on hand.  The only thing I had to purchase were a few more of the maple leaves as I didn't have enough left over from a previous project I had done.  I used leftover cardstock from a mini-album I just did that combines my interest in the sinking of the Titanic and other liners of the early 1900s with my first time seeing the Atlantic Ocean.  To make the Hogwarts card, I cut each piece of paper in half and distressed the edges to give it an aged look using Distress Ink in Vintage Photo.  I then took a maple leaf and added some eyes to it.  I put a foam mounting square on the back of the tag to raise it up a bit and make it more interesting.  I distressed the edges of that as well to give it an aged look. 

For the inside of the card, I wrote a poem, printed it off my computer, outlined it in black, and then pasted it onto the left part of the card.  I designed the right side of the card so that the tag could be removed and used as a bookmark.  I put a simple stamp on both sides of the card.  I made different bookmarks for Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw using the house crest and the relevant portion of the Sorting Hat song from the book for each house.  I didn't make any for Slytherin because I thought it might be too mean and make a kid feel bad.  The crest looks a little dark in the photo but is actually much lighter.

 

 The poem on the left side of the card.  It reads: 

Wee little witches,

And wee little wizards,

In search of some candy,

Through the desert they roam.

With their wands at the ready,

They look here and there, 

For that rascal Lord Voldemort, 

To give them a scare. 

 

But he's nowhere in sight, 

On this night full of fright, 

For the fine folks at Hogwarts

Have put up a fight.

So with bags full of goodies, 

And all sorts of candy,

They say to themselves, 

This night's been just dandy!

  The bookmark taken out of the card.

For the treats in the goody bags, I made them Hogwarts related.  Here are a few of the things I came up with.  I'll probably try to come up with some more.  It shouldn't be too hard.  That or else I'll just throw some more candy in the bag.  After all, that's what Halloween is all about for the kiddos.  :-)

A pencil from Hermione, who always knew the importance of doing her homework!

I wrote another poem and put it in a baggie along with a plastic spider and a piece of gum.  It's a little bit hard to tell in the picture, but the wrapper looks like a bloodshot eyeball.  The poem reads:

One is for potions, 

And one is for eating.

If you can't tell the difference, 

You've clearly been cheating.

                         Happy Halloween,

                 Professor Snape

(The inability of any given 

student to differentiate between

a cavity-inducing confection

disguised as an eyeball and 

what is clearly a real potion

ingredient from the Apothecary

in Diagon Alley will result in that

student being given a week's 

detention consisting of the

removal of calluses from 

Professor Umbridge's feet

without using magic.)

 This is a goody bag inside a goody bag, so to say and is from Ron and Harry.  The bag is really cute - little orange and purple spiders with eyes and some cobwebs printed on it.  I found some stickers in a box and added some foam stickers that I had left over from a craft project.  I also had some leftover purple curling ribbon from a previous project and it fit perfectly with the purple spiders on the bag so I added that to the tag.

The tag on this one reads: 

Happy Halloween

Mate - See ya on the

Quidditch Pitch!

Harry and Ron

Yes, these are little plastic Easter eggs, but everyone who has read the Harry Potter books knows that Hagrid once hatched a dragon in his hut so I thought it would be cute to include this.  The tag reads: 

Ya didn't think there was 

gonna be a dragon egg in

here, now did ya?

Happy Halloween, 

Yer pal, Hagrid

So those are the goody bags that I've made up.  I have amazing memories of Halloween growing up - running around with pillow cases full of candy until at least 10:00 p.m. with my siblings (and it wasn't considered rude to be knocking on doors at that hour!), the smell of fireplaces and lit pumpkins, the cool night air, the costumes, and sorting all our loot when we got home.  Good times, good times.  :-)   

 

Boo! at the Zoo and Howl-O-Ween at the Phoenix Zoo

Boo! at the Zoo takes place on October 19th and 20th between the hours of 9:00 and 4:00 and Howl-O-Ween takes place on October 25th and October 26th between the hours of 6:30 and 10:30 p.m.  

Boo! at the Zoo takes place during the day and is most definitely for the kiddos.  Howl-O-Ween activities are categorized into one of three categories according to how "scary" they are.  The year I went they were offering a horse-driven carriage ride around the remote areas of the zoo to which the public isn't usually allowed access.  That ride actually had the potential to be really creepy if not for one of the zoo workers/volunteers keeping up a steady stream of chatter and yelling which kind of ruined it.  I get that she was trying to stir up some excitement, but it would have been much better without it.  But I love going to the zoo so it was still enjoyable.  I just wouldn't expect to be at all scared despite any given activity being categorized as a Scare Level 3 activity.  That was a number of years ago though so things might have changed a bit.  For more information on either event, see the Phoenix Zoo website.

Boo! at the Zoo and Howl-O-Ween Event Details