2023, Art, Family, Fantasy, holidays

Festive Display

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When I was growing up my family and I used to drive around at the holidays to look at homes all decorated up with festive lights.  But that was the only time of year that folks decorated outside.  At Halloween, most folks put out jack-o-lanterns but usually just on Halloween or a couple of days beforehand.  It just wasn’t a thing that people did.

Well, it’s a thing now!

YA and I spent a little time driving around on Saturday, looking at the fall colors and some of the fascinating displays in yards around South Minneapolis.  Lots of ghosts hanging from trees, lots of skeletons lounging around on porches or adirondack chairs and, of course, pumpkins galore.  We saw one house with their long windowbox filled with little bitty pumpkins and squash of all colors.  We also saw a huge blow up arch that looked like a monster with outstretched arms that you had to walk through to get to the front door.  Wondering if that will too scary for small kids on Halloween night.

There were two stand-outs of the afternoon.  First was the class of skeletons, apparently waiting to have their school photo taken. Very creative and very funny.  Also a LOT of work I bet.  I kinda wish I lived across the street from this house so I could have watched as this scenario was set up.

The second photo YA snapped was such a mish-mash of stuff that we couldn’t resist.  Little ghost lights along the sidewalk, a funny looking ghostbusters car (looks a bit like a VW Beetle), a dog with a pink hat, a minion, pumpkins, and over-sized skeleton and (my favorite) a dragon!  We did see two other yards with this blow up dragon but this one won the prize for being part of such an eclectic collection. 

I’ve never been big on decorations outside, although I will admit to a cornstalk along with my pumpkins this year, but I do enjoy looking at others’ displays.  And I did look up the inflatable dragon online – not horribly expensive, but a bit much for someone who isn’t prone to overdoing décor outside.

Any Halloween/fall decorations (outside or inside) at your place?

60 thoughts on “Festive Display”

  2. I do not get into the Halloween spirit in any way. We have never lived anywhere that drew many trick or treaters. Now that is about dead in Mankato. Driving through the campus yesterday I was held up by long lines of families going to the field house for candy.
    But I understand people who get into the spirit of it, for a day or more being someone else, putting on a costume. My son does but not this year still waiting for his job to start next week. I have a friend up north who still in older age with the help of his progeny makes his yard into an engineering play yard of delights to walk through. That makes more sense to me than over the top Christmas decorations.

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      1. About 1 1/2” so far in Northfield. The ground is completely covered with no grass showing through. It’s still coming down. There is ice underneath the snow too and it’s treacherous out there. It’s really windy too! I know Mankato is often really windy. I never understood why that is, but it always seems to be really windy there.

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        1. I was out at O’Dark Hundred to do an errand and there were a few slick spots. Hopefully now that the sun is out, it will clear up!

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    2. YA and I usually wait until just a few days before Halloween to put pumpkins out on the steps. But even our waiting didn’t deter the squirrels this year. They’ve already chewed a good hole through the one pumpkin. They did eat the pink one, but not the orange ones yet. I wonder if the pink ones taste better?

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  6. We live in a duplex and my roommate has the room facing the street, so she always decorates her windows for the various holidays. This year she’s made a display with the light-up plastic ghost and jack-o-lanterns along with some vintage-style cutouts and masks. One year she drew cartoons of the Addams Family, which was great but a lot of work. Our landlady has put out pumpkins in the front yard—she had a volunteer vine in the back that produced four or five pumpkins (I think the squirrels got a couple).

    —Crow Girl

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  7. Rise and Spook Yourself, BooBoos,

    The houses on both sides of us have large, large inflatables in their yards–a witch with a cauldron, the worm from BeetleJuice, a spider web, two ghosts, etc. There may be a skeleton–there was in the past but maybe that one leaked. There has also been a Green Bay Packers flag that mysteriously disappeared, but that was a real horror in a street full of Vikings fans. I don’t know if that somehow was banished or if the guy is just ashamed of their performance this season.

    We do only a couple of scarecrows. I also stopped distributing candy because I was never home from work in time to do that, pre-retirement. Tonight I will turn off all the lights and hide in the basement. I no longer have work schedule conflicts, but if I buy the candy I eat the candy. Lou is even worse with the candy eating. I don’t like candy corn, but I would not ever distribute that because I have a sense of shame–who wants candy corn?

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    1. PS, the now spayed puppy experienced her first snow this morning. She stood in the door and would not move, then she sniffed snow, tasted snow, then barked at snow. I nudged her out the door to do her business after which she yipped at the snow again, puzzled. I hate to even tell her about what is in her future.

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      1. We found to our dismay that all our boarding kennel options are full over Christmas, so Kyrill will be a traveling dog to Brookings and spend the holidays with his male West Highland Terrier cousin. I expect some p*****g contests before they figure out who is the dog in charge. Neither of them realize that the cat is the dog in charge.

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      2. Pippin must be old. Well, he is old, I guess. He’s 14. He didn’t bat an eye. Just went out and did his job, shook himself before coming in like he’s supposed to, had breakfast, and went back to bed.

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    2. I know candy corn is polarizing, but I do like it. Unfortunately the company that makes most of the candy corn in the America uses gelatin. There are a few other companies that do not, but it means I have to drive to Hy-Vee to get it. I’ve made one trek so far this year, but there may be another one coming up in the next couple of weeks.

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  8. No decorations for this Halloween curmudgeon. But hey, knock yourselves out, yard decoration fanatics. It’s your money. Just don’t complain to me about how hard it is to make ends meet and pay the bills these days. 😦

    Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Now you made me laugh, because sometimes I think the Baboons are so homogenous that we were all sent down from the Mother ship out in space somewhere about 60-80 years ago to observe Earthlings and life on Earth and then, upon our “deaths,” report our findings to Zork and Mork 😉

        Chris

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        2. Every year YA and I have the same conversation about putting up lights and inflatables in the yard for the various holidays. The first reason on my list is I don’t want to bother with the hassle and the second reason is I don’t want to pay more electricity to run lights or inflatables in the yard. I could probably come up with reasons three and four if I really needed to but one and two do it in my book.

          Part of this conversation is always my offer that if she wants to do the work and pay the additional electric bill, then she should go for it. Please note she has never taken me up on this.

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  9. Okay, Chris just said everything I wanted to say but he said it so much better than I could have!

    I do have one little candle holder in the shape of a jack-o-lantern that I use only on this day every year just for myself. I don’t put anything out or leave a light on for little villains. They have so much now. There has been “Trunk or Treating” since Saturday here. They must be almost insane on sugar.

    Everything is so much more than when we were kids. There used to be some effort and creativity for Halloween costumes and decorations. Some still do, I guess, but we used to have to really work at it. It’s just more consumerism and money and cheap plastic stuff that ends up in a landfill. Yes, I am a curmudgeon about it.

    It’s a blizzard here. Not kidding.

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  10. No Halloween decor inside or out for me. I live in a secured building and have not had trick or treaters for decades, which is just fine with me. Last Sunday I did help my sister out with a Trunk and Treat event at our church. It only lasted an hour and the kids were pretty cute in their costumes. That’s as much Halloween as I care to be involved with.

    The snow has stopped, the sun is out, but the wind is howling and it is quite cold. Guess I won’t be doing my daily walk today – and certainly not a nice evening for trick or treating.

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  11. OT. Blevins this Sunday the 5th at 2 PM. Jim and Kathy’s. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by LAexie Sherman and Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Don’t forget to set your clocks back.

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  12. I’m pleased to announce that I found for the first time Cadbury’s chocolate balls in red, yellow, & orange (called “mini harvest handfuls”) and snapped up a bag.
    If we run out of salted peanuts for the kids later today, we could…. No, absolutely not, they’re not getting my Cadbury.

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    1. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on a very good deal for bags of fun size M&Ms. YA just came home from work, dug all of the peanut butter bags out and said we can’t give those to trick or treaters tonight.

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        3. Despite it being 32° here, we actually had 37 trick-or-treaters this year. It’s a record for about the last 10 years. We clearly had some kids who were driven in from other areas. I know some people whine about that but not me. I don’t have any problems giving candy to a kid with a costume — no matter where they came from.

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  18. No decorations, inside or out, at our house. Our neighbor next door, and a couple across the street have elaborate displays. Tim and Katie across the street really get into it, and dress up for handing out candy. Their display attracts a lot of kids.

    We must have had forty trick or treaters of all ages come to our door tonight. Most were wearing costumes, some quite elaborate, no two alike. It struck me how polite they all were.

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  19. My trick of the day. Took Sandy to eye doctor. They have two rooms with the special chairs they slide back and her wheel chair can roll in place. She cannot be transferred from her wheel chair.. But she could not follow their instructions. Not even to read the letters. I tried but I failed. But somehow by other means they still got some readings on her eyes, and checked for pressure. We had a 45 minute wait for the van to pick her up after. She got a bit frantic about it. I thought she would enjoy being out. She did not. I still have a huge migraine from it all.
    My son and his exwife were handing out candy together. They had lots of candy but ran out after 50 minutes. They too commented how polite everyone was.

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