Decorating for Halloween Every Ten Years

I went to a good friends home for Bunko a few weeks ago. Her home was amazingly decorated for Halloween. I was amazed at how she moved all the regular decorations and put up festive decorations everywhere, even down to the books on the end table.

I used to LOVE Halloween and would decorate every year and host a couples costume party annually for years. When the divorce happened ten years ago, my life was so busy that I couldn't find the time to decorate. My youngest two princesses have never seen all of my decorations for any holiday if they have even seen any.

I was feeling somewhat saddened by my thought that they wouldn't know any of the decorations even if I pulled them out. Many of our decorations I actually made and the girls wouldn't have any recognition of them. I went to the dollar store and bought five decorations for you youngest to put up.

You would have thought it was Christmas the way she smiled while putting up the few decorations. I asked her if she wanted me to pull out all our decorations. I heard a little voice repeat what I have said for years, "It is so much work to put them away that it isn't worth getting them out." It made me sad for her that I hadn't made more effort to do that for her.

I told her we had the time today and we were going to get the decorations out. She helped carry them upstairs. It took me some time to find them and I still think I am missing something but we put up the majority of our Halloween decoration and weeded out those we didn't want to keep. It was nice to put some in the "good will" and some the girls were "fighting over" but for the most part, we enjoyed putting them out.

To get into the mood, my fourth princess pulled out the scary sounds CD and enjoyed listening to that while we decorated. Princess number three had company but is shown here holding a family joke decoration. I will be passing this lovely "snowman ghost" to my sister next weekend. It has gone around and makes us laugh and laugh as it gets passed around.

Here I am holding some of the pumpkin family I made 20 years ago. When I made it, I only had two children and was expecting princess number three. I thought about getting rid of the group but the older children are going to have to draw numbers for who gets to keep that decoration as they all made dibs.

We have our coffee table covered with Halloween books and the back of the couch is covered with stuffed animals that are "Halloween" dressed. I like that both the books and stuff animal decorations are child friendly. Here is a link talking of that tradition

The girls asked me to blog about some of our family traditions for Halloween. I don't know that I have all the pictures scanned that I need to fulfill that request but I will try to get that information posted over the next week or two.

All in all, the house looks fairly good. I didn't finish the outside decorations as it has been cold but will work on those tomorrow. It may not be grand or amazing but I have to say that my little princesses were smiling to see the decorations and the older girls remembered many. I was working on finishing some sewing that needed to be finished on Princess number 2's quilt squares and another apron I promised to make but those can wait as Princess number 5 is still young enough to care about such things.

Happy Halloween Princesses!