Halloween 2021

[asakiyume]

Our neighborhood is a magnet at Halloween, and the residents go all in to make it fun. It was great to be back to doing it this year--I really loved seeing all the kids, parents, and teens, and some of the costumes were just fabulous. My favorite was a chicken: a homemade comb-and-wattle of red felt, attached to a white felt cap, and the kid was wearing a white hoodie. I didn't get a picture, but one of the neighbors caught it in a slideshow they posted on FB--apologies for the graininess:



I carved a blowfish jack o'lantern:

In the early afternoon


After dark


And I used the monster mouth that I made a couple of years ago. "Do you dare to reach inside the monster's mouth to get a treat?"



Almost all kids dared ;-) (In some cases, a parent ventured in their stead.)



You can see the rain on the table in that last shot. It meant that we had to move the treasure chest (made by my sister for my kids years ago, and vulnerable to water) back inside. (The treasure chest had backup bags of candy--we used it all.)



Under the cut are some more fun costumes and shots of the growing dark

















Perhaps you recognized the Little Heroine with her mom? Her brother dressed as Pikachu. The girls on the other side dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and as a Beanie Baby cat. Very fun afternoon and evening!

Comments

[cmcmck]

It's not such a thing here as you know and the weather was utterly foul so nothing much happened.

We'll have to see if November the 5th is a better evening!

[asakiyume]

Fingers crossed!

(Yeah, I heard the weather was super bad in Dorset, where my mother-in-law lives)

[amaebi]

Will you post photos of Guys?

[sartorias]

Oh, what fun--and you even got to have some rain! Darling costumes!

[asakiyume]

It was a day filled with a bit of everything! The costumes were, as Claire (C.S.E.) Cooney would say, faboosh!

[minoanmiss]

Yay Halloween! Yours looks like an absolutely party!

[asakiyume]

It really was a party atmosphere! In past years there's been live music. This year it sounded like someone was DJing.

[osprey_archer]

That sounds like a delightful Halloween night! I love the very patient dog with the gnome costume. And the blowfish jack-o-lantern looks beautiful, especially in that nighttime shot.

[asakiyume]

It was super fun ^_^

The dog was a veritable paragon of patience, right down to posing, motionless, for a photo

[sovay]

I carved a blowfish jack o'lantern

THAT'S SO GOOD.

I'm glad it was a real Halloween.

[asakiyume]

Really? Thank you! I had seen the video clip of the blowfish making its magnificent mandala to attract a mate, and I thought--who better to commemorate on a pumpkin?

[sovay]

Really? Thank you!

Really. It's a marvelous blowfish. I am only surprised you did not have a second blowfish pumpkin at the end of the night.

[asakiyume]

Awww! That's the sweetest thing you could possibly say.

[queenoftheskies]

How fun!

[asakiyume]

It was loads of fun :-)

[gwynnega]

The blowfish is marvelous!

[asakiyume]

Thank you! I think if I had it to do over, I would have cut deeper for the spikes, because they didn't show up as much as I wanted, but I was pretty happy with it overall.

[amaebi]

Wow, glorious!

It turns out that there's no trick-or-treating in our new development, whereas at Animal Farm our street was, I think, skipped for excessive distance between horse-property houses.

[asakiyume]

We're definitely a popular neighborhood because of the houses being close together. The rest of the town has some kind of zoning requiring houses to have an acre of property (iirc), whereas here the lots are 1/3 acre, plus there are open common areas.

It's been interesting over the years to see the evolution of people's feelings about the influx of trick-or-treaters. Early on, there were some people who enjoyed it and others who didn't like it, felt it was unfair that we had to play host. But, remarkably and happily, more and more people ended up in the first camp. Once it became a source of pride ("nobody does Halloween like the Dana Woods neighborhood"), almost everyone ended up onboard. There are still grumbles about the traffic (which is genuinely a difficulty), but it really has the feeling of a whole-neighborhood party.

[amaebi]

Halloween, festival of grace.

[asakiyume]

Doug Ross, the author of the Titanic book? He described it as "the most liberal holiday" (he uses liberal to mean progressive).

[amaebi]

Nice!

[skygiants]

I LOVE YOUR BLOWFISH PUMPKIN!!!

[asakiyume]

It pleases me inordinately that you guys like it! So happy ^_^

I love these!

[(Anonymous)]

What a perfect autumnal series of shots! - Claire

Re: I love these!

[asakiyume]

It was a wonderful evening--one day I should have a Halloween party, and we could *reallY* make things fun for the kids.

[light_of_summer]

Adding my applause for the blowfish jack-o-lantern. I think the spikes work well as-is. If they'd been deeper, they might have made it harder to see the facial expression, y'know?

Glad your Halloween was fun! Thanks for sharing it with us.

[asakiyume]

That's a good point about them maybe making the design too busy and hard to see!

You're very welcome--thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

[wayfaringwordhack]

So many people! Looks like you had a fun turnout in your neighborhood, all right. :D

[asakiyume]

It was very fun--a party ^_^