My favourite day of the year was yesterday – Halloween! I love the dressing up and pumpkins, spending time with friends and wandering the streets at night checking out the decorations. These pumpkins were made by the kids and my pumpkin was made with a power drill and a spade drill bit to get big circles – if I had more time I would have been more creative with it but still, it was a great experience to power drill a pumpkin!

My daughter has been enjoying Halloween with her friend each year where their house is fully decked out with lights and even a projector playing Thriller and Can’t Stop the Feeling on rotation which was so much fun as the kids got candy to dance! We stayed up till 8:45pm, and I said to the kids, now is the time for bed put all of their haul of candy away until tomorrow. Two different neighbourhoods yield a fair amount of candy that my son is trading in for something fun, like a Beyblade!

Sunday was so much fun with catching up with my peeps from FabMo at their annual Textile Art Boutique! This year I could not be a vendor as I have a full-time job in the classroom, so I was there as a buyer and found some beautiful pieces to take home. I really enjoyed the Japanese artisans, and a couple of booths caught my eye with Sarah from The Folly Garden who made these fantastic fabric flowers that I could not resist decorating the lounge room. I only bought a leaf and a flower but the colours and fabrics were just beautiful, and I really loved her work as I am drawn to colour just like a pollinator. Next door was the beautiful spirit Miko Kami dolls by Bahira where every doll is one of a kind. I planned to be at the boutique for just one hour and ended up staying close to three hours as I had so many friends to catch up with, it was wonderful to be with my textile loving friends!

Finally I finished sewing all my feathers onto my owl costume and wore it to work on Hallloween. The outfit was inspired by Eva from the Owl Diaries book series where she is a creative little owl who hangs out with her pet bat and enjoys her time at school. The teaching staff wanted to tap into our inner superhero, so my owl cape/wings channelled “my inner wisdom and creativity” – quoted by teacher Marla.

Halloween evening we hung out at this house and danced and wandered the streets with the kids to do their Trick or Treating – it was the perfect night to be out and about.

A favourite pumpkin carving I found was this little Japanese ghoul when we took the kids to the houses in my friend’s neighbourhood. Here is the gang of kiddos in their costumes a skeleton pirate, a phoenix, Happy from Fairy Tale, a grim reaper and a skeleton (their family theme of Jack and Sally from the film The Nightmare before Christmas).

Today we experienced a Day of the Dead celebration/presentation at school with our Spanish teacher sharing her tradition of the altar where the kids helped with decorating and we learned about honouring relatives that have passed on. Plus one of my favourite animated films ‘The Book of Life’ explains this tradition with such humour and colour including the Radiohead classic ‘Creep’.

Now I had better rest to get through the week, so I can watch more episodes of Stranger Things!