Halloween is hands-down my favourite holiday. Last year, my friends and I had a riotous weekend of spooky fun and started what I’d hoped would be an annual tradition of zombie dinner parties. Sadly, I was away this year so I didn’t get to do any of that, but I made up for it by celebrating the traditional way: carving pumpkins, dressing up the porch and handing out candy to little monsters!
As my Halloweens tend to be, this one was a scramble. I started at about 3pm, which is pretty late considering Trick-or-Treating usually starts at about 5pm in most neighbourhoods. Thankfully, I’d popped by the dollar store the night before and picked up my supplies so I could get right to attacking the pumpkin. Adam helped me lop off the top, but smartly decided to make himself scarce when things got messy. That’s ok though. If I could have avoided getting elbow-deep in orange gunk, I would have too.
Unfortunately there’s no way to carve a pumpkin without getting dirty, so despite my aversion to goopy pumpkin guts I soldiered on.
My icky efforts were finally rewarded with…this guy!
Once I had washed up, Mom and I tackled the rest of the porch decor. She made creepy, tattered tendrils from black garbage bags to hang over the door, and I liberally dusted the front gate with cobwebs and spiders. The “bouquet” of dead branches was also Mom’s contribution – a handful of twigs she’d just clipped off our tree – which I topped it off with a big glittery orange bow.
And just in case it wasn’t obvious enough that we had candy, I quickly made a banner from construction paper, white paint and some ribbon.
The finishing touch was lighting my Jack-O-Lantern, and setting him up with a few more candles for ambiance. Mom supplied an old pot and some vines for flair, and just like that we were in business!
Even before the kiddies came around, we had a few (adult!) neighbours stop by to take photos. Not a bad response, considering it was such a last-minute job and that we spent less than $20 including the pumpkin and carving kit.
Speaking of last-minute, once the porch was done I only had about 15 minutes to get myself ready. It was a bit challenging for me this year since I’m currently travelling and didn’t want to buy a costume (I could only find skanky versions of anything I wanted to be) so I had to make do with what I had in my suitcase. Thankfully I have pretty theatrical taste in clothing – I actually had a hot pink sweater and bright purple pants. All I had to buy was some purple eyeliner plus a pair of cat ears, et voila: a $10 Cheshire Cat costume.
And that was my super thrifty Halloween-in-a-Hurry. I can’t wait till next year, even though it sounds like my quaint decor is going to get replaced with some seriously spooky stuff…Adam’s already talking about a fog machine and zombies in the flower bed. Time to practice my scary face!
