Halloween 2009

When I asked Edward what he was going to be for Halloween this year he responded with, "disapproving!"

That basically sums up the general British attitude towards Halloween despite the fact that they're the ones who invented the holiday in the first place! I kid you not, a substantial proportion of the population actually believes that Halloween is just another form of begging. They crack me up!



Luckily for me the US citizens technically outnumber the UK citizens in our house (if you count Tiki) so we celebrate Halloween the American way; BIG. I'm pretty sure the whole village thinks I'm nuts for decorating our house with skeletons, cobwebs and witches but I'll never give in to the English way! Just call me Braveheart!




So this year I only had a few hours to prep for Halloween because we were gallivanting about in the Peak District until the eleventh hour.

My biggest worry was finding a tail for Tabitha's black cat costume. I needed a no-skills-required based solution, but wasn't having any luck. Halloween resources are very limited in the UK. Edward and his sister suggested she go as a Manx cat but in the end I just duct taped some fuzzy, black yarn to the inside of her skirt. Classy!








I was also worried about the face painting because, usually, my attempts to paint Tabby's face end in tears. Looking on the bright side, I now know how to paint a spooky skeleton - even if it was a panda that I was originally aiming for!

But Tabby Cat seemed fairly pleased with my paint job, so all my worries were in vain.







Who I really should have been worrying about was Dakota. Too old for trick-or-treating this year, he dressed as Death and sprang out from behind the hedge at all the over-eights. Poor British kids, they're just not used to this kind of thing! There were piles of terrified trick-or-treaters screaming, crying and tripping over each other as they scrambled for the exit. There were vows never to return to our house again, a minor thumb injury and even a suspected bladder malfunction incident! As a consequence of him scaring off all the kids, we now have heaps of leftover candy. And I can't help wondering if Dakota had this result in mind all along. After all, he ended up with a MUCH bigger haul than he would've if he'd actually pounded the pavement like all the good little trick-or-treaters. We're gonna have to keep an eye on this one!


We spent the rest of the evening with our fabulous family friends carving pumpkins, laughing, trick-or-treating...











...bobbing for apples, watching X-Factor and eating a stodgy, frozen dinner because I didn't have time to plan or prepare something nice.










But the story doesn't end there. Two days after Halloween a few of the neighborhood kids came around for a chat. They all had their hoodies on backwards but I couldn't figure out why so I asked them. They lifted their hoods to cover their faces and told me that they were trying to be like Dakota on Halloween - but that it wasn't working and they kept running into stuff and hurting themselves! What the...?

Then the ten year old asked if I'd "told Dakota off" for his little Halloween stunt. I immediately regretted telling him that we'd all found it very entertaining because then he revealed his plans to do the exact same thing when he was Dakota's age! We're such a bad influence. Maybe people like us are the reason why Brits don't like Halloween!!