Halloween trail and tales from the farm

Halloween has been and gone for another year.  We don’t really celebrate it.

We’ve done pumpkins for the last few years – well, being a blogger and instagrammer it’s pretty essential to visit a pumpkin patch and take photos of pretty autumn shots isn’t it?  Last year our picked pumpkins went rotten outside before we had chance to carve them and this year I managed to avoid doing any.

Dressing up

N did go to a Halloween party at a school friend’s. Complete with white sheet to go as a ghost. The comedy value of seeing him trying to look out 2 eye holes, then having him suggest cutting the holes into a slot…eventually we settled on bigger holes, but it then spent most of the time trying not to drag the sheet on the ground.

Halloween trail

We had a spare day over half term and I suggested a morning out doing the Halloween trail round town.  It was a lovely sunny day, and we had enough time before going to the cinema later in the day.

Picking up the trail map in a flower shop, we headed out in a bit of a lopsided direction following the trail numbers to different shops and places in town.  Answering the questions and looking out for Skelley the Skeleton’s bones in shop windows.  N doesn’t mind a treasure hunt but he does tend to get bored. Because this one was around the town and there were plenty of new places to look at (rather than sufferingly following me around shopping), it kept his interest up.

We ended up at Banbury Cross admiring the Fine Lady on her white horse statue.  I quite like the statue and it looked pretty amazing with the reflections in the puddles below the horse’s feet.  Then we finished with a walk through the church yard to look for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels gravestone.  We’d only talked about the book a few weeks ago when we visited Gulliver’s Land, so N spent a bit of time reading the tombstone.  Maybe taking him round graveyards is a way to get him reading!

Finishing off in the sweet shop for the final clue meant N was rewarded with the spooky bag of sweets for everyone doing the trail.  A nice touch and there weren’t too many to totally wreck his teeth.  It was a lovely relaxing wander round town and it was so funny with N expressing surprise at how many different directions round town I knew. I think he forgets I’ve lived in the area for the majority of my life.

Lack of pumpkins

I’d bought a few small squashes earlier in autumn for some flatlay photography.  N kept reminding me that the pumpkins last year went rotten outside before we had chance to carve them. But by the time it got closer this year, we’d forgotten about buying one. N wasn’t impressed when he realised we’d not got one. I was duly told off.

Trick or treat discussions

I don’t agree with trick or treating.  This is the first year when N’s gone on and on about going.  We don’t have people come round to our house because we’re in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like his school friends are turning up at our house and finding him at home not joining in. N also doesn’t like dressing up so he wouldn’t really be able to go out trick or treating if not dressed up.  But this didn’t seem to worry N.

He went on and on, with me saying no. I’m assuming this argument will continue each year.  He finished off saying he would go when he was allowed to go out on his own…at age 9. Er no. 9 years old and roaming rural streets without lights. I don’t think so.

Hopefully in a few years he’ll see my point of view and no longer want to go out anyway.

What did you get up to for hallowen this year?

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