The Longest Halloween Week Ever

 

We don’t typically make too huge a fuss over Halloween. The kids dress up {usually in costumes we already have in our extensive dress up collection built up over time thanks to 90% off after-holiday sales and kind friends with older children}, carve pumpkins, and trick or treat.

This year, the holiday week took on a life of its own. While Superstorm Sandy didn’t cause the devastation in Ohio as it did along the coast, we did experience incredibly heavy winds, downed trees and power lines, and lost electricity in many parts of the northeast. As a result, trick-or-treating was postponed until the weekend and everything pretty much shut down on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Besides the tree crashing into the side of our other home and cracking the exterior and interior walls, causing the kids’ pictures to fall from the mantle, we were able to stay pretty much safe and unharmed.

{Just a side note – you may recall my posts about the teeny-tiny house we’re living in and might be a bit confused. We’re renting our main home out to some friends whose house burned down last year. We plan to sell that house eventually, but they needed to stay in the school district, so we offered our home and furnishings to them while theirs is rebuilt, and moved into a small rental. The rental wasn’t damaged, our main home was.}

We used the chilly rain as an excuse to snuggle in, carve pumpkins, roast seeds, and cuddle together. Some liked the carving process more than others. Trevor was thrilled to do everything himself this year. Molly scraped the seeds from the inside, but wanted Daddy to cut hers for her – luckily for him she drew up a blueprint of the exact face she wanted. Logan… well, she wasn’t too into the whole “cleaning out the pumpkin’s insides” as the other two. She did like poking carving tools into the pumpkin once her siblings did the dirty work for her, though.

 

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My favorite part of pumpkin carving {and fall} is roasting pumpkin seeds. I have to admit that I usually burn them. This year, however, they turned out DELICIOUS! I made garlic roasted seeds by rinsing the seeds, patting them dry, and tossing them in a mixture of 2 tablespoons melted butter, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. I spread them out on a cookie sheet, and roasted them for about 45 minutes at 350-degrees, giving them a quick stir every 10 minutes or so to keep them from burning. I took them out when they were golden brown. Yummy!

 

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Since we try to watch what the kids eat and have eliminated artificial colors and flavors from our lives, they know that the candy they collect while trick-or-treating will be donated to one of the various candy collection drives in the area. Instead, they trick or treat for fun, playing with the neighborhood kids until they get tired of the Ohio fall chill, and head home to pass out candy and watch The Great Pumpkin.

When they stomp their chilled little bodies into the house, they turn over their plastic loot-filled pumpkins, and I hand them a treat bag I’ve prepared for them.

 

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I preorder candy along with some kind of simple toy or project. This year, Molly got a Barbie spa science kit so she and I can make bubble bath and lip balm this week, Logan got the super-cute Lauri ABC puzzle you see in the picture, and Secret Agent Trevor got a motion-activated digital spy camera. Simple treasures that require creativity or critical thinking and a manageable bag of all-natural candy, along with skipping through the neighborhood with friends and coming home when they’d had enough – no race to see who can get to the most houses, nobody sad because they’re missing out on the fun of collecting and eating candy. Instead, they get tucked into bed, happy and calm because they’re not hyped up on too much sugar and chemicals, and likely already dreaming about the time they’ll spend with their new toy.

All in all, despite the superstorm, we had a nice time this year. The kids enjoyed themselves, we passed out tons of stickers, spider rings, tattoos, and pretzels {we don’t pass out anything we won’t eat}, and everyone fell into bed happy.

How was your Halloween?

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