Jaci Dawn

Judging by how silent my “blog roll” is, I am not the only blogger who is either suffering from “writer’s block” or who is laying low until the election is over to say anything again. It’s pretty quiet out there (except on Facebook, where everyone has an opinion and they don’t mind interjecting their opinion onto your wall).

But I am not here to bemoan the highly charged political atmosphere. I am here to celebrate one of my favorite holidays, and that holiday isn’t Election Day.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saint’s Day. Samhain. Hallowe’en.

It’s a date that is as hotly debated in some circles as the current presidential election is being debated in 2012. For many years, I never openly told anyone that I celebrated the day: the church I was attending highly discouraged the practice. So we carved pumpkins and put them on display at home, but we didn’t share photos of our prizes with our circle of friends at church. I had a hard time with the “do not dress up” rule.

I was known to show up at the Harvest Festival with my wire whip and my nose pin. It did not amuse some of the church elders, but it wasn’t really “dress up” so… Or maybe they just realized that making it into an argument was not going to win me over?

I usually removed the nose pin after the initial shock of seeing me with it in had passed. The wire whip, however – that is a prized possession. (Portland Saturday Market. The artist still sells his wares there.)

Time has brought changes and I now openly celebrate Hallowe’en. I gave up on trying to fit my round self into the square hole of conformity. This decision has brought a little freedom into my world: I openly dress up on October 31st and I have a small collection of items that go on display to entice little Trick-or-Treaters to come to our front door for candy. I add a little bit every year.

I don’t do this for my grandchildren: they never came over on Hallowe’en when they lived close by, anyway. I do this for me, because I like to.

This year’s splurge was a trail of lighted “bones” to light the dark path to our house. We live on a poorly lit street and the hundreds of little creatures that come out to swarm the park two blocks away tend to avoid our dark street. I’m hoping that the combination of porch light on and bones to light the lawn will help attract a few more than our usual ten.

This is the candy table. The Orc (to the right of the witch, holding heavy “chains” makes loud growling sounds. The cauldron will be full of candy (can’t put it out until the 31st because of the dogs).

It should have an eerie effect if we turn off the lights when we open the door… (But we won’t, because we’ll be juggling big, friendly dogs that want to lick little kids and the cauldron of candy.

Tell me the lighted spiders are cool.

From left-to-right: I picked up the hands at Goodwill last year. Awesome. A rat begs beside the Cannibal jack o’lantern. Jake & Elwood (the Alien twins) decided to come outside this year. And I got a glow-in-the-dark skeleton for the doorbell hanger. That weird little candle stick holder up above the Alien twins was a yard sale find. I think it was someone’s high school pottery project gone wrong. Oh – and there’s a red-eyed rat down on the old root. (You have to click on the photo to see everything close up).

I consider the jack o’lantern a masterpiece. HAHA. I don’t think the little pumpkin on the left is very amused, though, and the one in jack’s mouth isn’t talking…

Spooky, huh? I couldn’t do this with my grand kids around. It is a little on the bizarre side, even for me.

I just spent the better part of an hour trying to upload a video to this post. It isn’t going to happen. YouTube doesn’t like the video and WordPress truncated the video. I’ve exhausted my options. Here’s the story behind the Video That Will Not Upload Properly:

I bought this broom from Avon. It takes four AA batteries. Turn it on, and it cackles in the most hideous voice. And it “dances”. It bumps into things, reverses, turns in circles, bumps into things, reverses. After about twenty seconds of torturous laughter, it stops.

And Harvey barks at it. Which sets it off, again.

It’s hysterical.

Murphy’s reaction was even funnier than Harvey’s. Murphy is certain the thing is possessed and must be destroyed.

This is one thing I wish my grandchildren were here to see. I know they’d drive me nuts, touching it again and again and again and again, just to listen to it cackle and watch it bump into things. It’s great.

Since I am on the subject of dress up, I found this mask at Goodwill. It was chipped and faded and beat up. I stripped the ribbon off of it and cleaned it up. I used some “Golden” that is in my bag of tricks and recreated the raised filigree design. I mixed some paint and repainted it, regilded it, and then I heated up the hot glue gun and replaced the ribbon and the “jewel”.

I wear glasses, so I don’t know when I would get to wear such a cool mask (and be able to see across the room), but it’s pretty!

I forgot I had these on once and went downstairs for something. My husband looked up and said, “Did you know your horn is flopping over?”

He didn’t say, “What is that on your head?”

He didn’t say, “What are you doing with that?”

He didn’t say, “Where did you get that?”

He just pointed out that one of the horns had leaned forward in an awkward angle.

Gotta love a man who is not surprised by his wife.