Halloween’s come and gone with owls and rabbits

For all the interest and excitement, looking out for new crafts to try out, Halloween’s always over almost as quickly as it’s begun.

We don’t really get involved, although N being at nursery, did mean they were doing a ‘dress for halloween’ where they could go in in fancy dress (some turn up in princess outfits any day of the week anyway being toddlers!) or just dress in Halloween colours.

N’s not a big fan of dressing up, inasmuch as he’ll wear what’s put out for him (usually), but won’t look out for fancy dress outfits, even if other children are fighting over them.  But I thought we should make a bit of an (half hearted) effort at least.

I was going to get creative, buy some black fabric, stitch on elastic round the ends and shoulders and it could be bat wings, but after a trip to a poundshop it was a lot less effort and cost to just buy a vampire cape for £1, and add the bat deely boppers I’d picked up a couple of weeks ago.  He was happy enough dressing in that this morning, and it’s easy enough to take off if wanted when doing activities or if he doesn’t want them kept on at nursery.

Usually when it’s dress up days, we’re one of the only ones who’re not dressed up, but today, it looked like N was the only one in an outfit.  I realised after sending him in that we do have an orange t-shirt, so he could have just had a pumpkin look instead.

They’d organised for a local falconry centre to bring some owls for the children to watch and hold.  Turned out N didn’t want to try holding one (I’m not really surprised as they can be quite large), and he confused his key worker by wanting to go back inside and get the Peter Rabbit (nursery have one just like his).  He then took it outside and cuddled it close while watching the owls.  Once I’d told them that he likes watching Peter Rabbit and in that Brown Owl is the baddie, it was then obviously that he was trying to protect Peter Rabbit.  How cute!

Apart from putting the candles in the pumpkin, we didn’t do anything else.  N likes to sit in the dark in the kitchen and watch the light in it.  He comes into the kitchen telling me ‘make it dark, cover it to make it dark’ after I’d put a towel over it and him in daylight to initially show him the pumpkin when it was lit up.  I was a bit concerned the other day when he told me to ‘light the conker’.  Wrong autumnal fruit or seed, N!

Thankfully, we’re in the middle of nowhere so don’t get trick or treaters round.  I think with a toddler that’d be too much, plus it’s so dark down our drive, it’d be too spooky for anyone to even see where they’re going.

Do you go to town on Halloween, or do you avoid it