Sometimes things just don't go as planned. We had planned to go to the Huntington in Pasadena this Sunday for the opening weekend of the new expansion to the Chinese Garden. I had studied up by watching a webinar from the Huntington, and was excited to put all my new knowledge to work.
And then, we just couldn't go. We had some family business to attend to - and well, you know how that goes. So -- I will have to report to you about all the exciting things to see when we are able to visit. But I did accomplish something else very important this weekend...Halloween!
We're always the most decorated house on the block. Even after all our girls now have homes of their own, we enjoy decorating for the neighborhood, especially now that children are all zooming for school. I remember fondly one time when our next door neighbor, who at the time had two little ones, told us that her boys wanted to "go to Halloween!" What they meant was, they wanted to come visit our house to see our decorations for Halloween. For them, WE were Halloween! So precious!
I have decades of decorations stored up, which I periodically prune, but perhaps not periodically enough. We usually get about 100 trick-or-treaters each Halloween, and my husband always answers the door in a horse head, and surprises the kidlets! In fact, on years when Robert doesn't wear the horse head, they all ask -- "where is the horse!" One year, we bought a raccoon head, like the character of Rocket in the Guardian of the Galaxy movies. Guess what the kidlets said. "Where is the horse?" So, we've learned that our neighbor kids don't want things to change.
But this year we are perplexed. What to do about trick-or treaters? Because our house is so decorated, children and parents may expect for us to be "in business." Yet, we don't want to flout the rules about social distancing, and safe trick or treating.
I think that we have decided to decorate a shelving unit with spooky stuff, place it on the driveway (see above about my storage treasures) and indicate an enter and exit strategy for each child/family. Then we will just lay out candies on one of the shelves for kids to pick up. It will be on an honor system. We will have spooky music, a fog machine, strobe lights, and maybe the horse head will even put in an appearance -- with a mask!
Halloween is always lots of fun at our house, whether we have 100 trick-or-treaters or 2.
Oh! And I didn't mention that all of this excitement required that I take out my marigolds. They were drying by the day, would not have made it to Halloween, and had the worst case of thrips that I had ever seen. However, on the morning that we were pulling them out, one of the passers by reprimanded me for taking out the marigolds. "Why are you pulling them out, they are so beautiful!" Oy! You can't please everybody. I told her that we were preparing for more beauty to come.
Let's see if she thinks that pumpkins and ghouls qualify as "more beauty." I doubt it. But I love them nonetheless. And I love decorating with my husband, who has been my Halloween partner in crime since the 7th grade!