As the kids would say, “always repost”

Things have picked up a little here at The Mullet and October is generally when things kick into high gear for our family. Now that we’ve settled into a school/activity routine it is time to think of more important things: HALLOWEEN. But first, Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day in Canada is the second Monday in October. So you get a lot of mileage out of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, at least from October 1st until November 10th [1].

We spent Thanksgiving with some of our closest friends and as usual, it was wonderful. We have rented cottages in the past and gone away with the our families over Thanksgiving weekend, but they’ve hosted it two years in a row and both times it’s been great. They did the turkey and pies and we brought some side dishes. After dinner we played games & chatted over drinks and it ended up being a very chill, very fun evening.

Bonus: they had so many leftovers from Thanksgiving this year that we ended up making a turkey pot pie the next day (and freezing it – we ate leftovers for like 3 days and that was quite enough turkey for one week!).

We gave up hosting ALL holidays during the pandemic and thankfully have never gone back to it, at least for family. Every year it was one drama after another and it had occurred to me during the downtime of covid that people only complained and judged us (“Oh, are these…paper…plates? What an interesting…choice!” Yeah, unless you’re offering to do dishes, we’re gonna go ahead and feed the 20 people stacked in our living room this year on paper plates. COPE.). Mr. Tucker and I were running ourselves ragged for people who didn’t appreciate the work we put into hosting *every* family gathering for years, even when we had two small children. The pièce de résistance was the troll who brought their own gravy one year because they didn’t like ours and who – while we were scrambling to get dinner on the table for 14 people – demanded we warm it up for them. As soon as covid hit, I realized how insane it was to keep trying and my instinct couldn’t have been more on point: no one invited us to their place for holidays post-covid. So it was clear they weren’t interested, either. Sometimes you have to stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

My lovely friend Jenn porch-dropped these flowers off last week, so kind!

Saying that we are a “Halloween family” is grossly underestimating how much we lean into Spooky Season. As a recovering goth, I have imparted my love for the macabre onto my children. During the pandemic we used to decorate and watch #13daysofHalloweenMovies but now that the kids are older, we do a lot less family stuff because they do a lot more Spooky Season stuff with their friends.

I have seen a lot of pushback from folks who think Halloween is too commercialized and I guess that has become somewhat true. But it’s true in the way that *everything* seems too commercialized these days with the tiktok shop and obsession with keeping the social media eyeballs glued to apps. It also still has nothing on Christmas, if we are honest with ourselves. But it is the one holiday – and I will die on this hill – where you don’t really need to buy much to enjoy it. You can make a clever costume out of nothing, you can give away inexpensive candies, you can host a fun horror-themed potluck. I am also a big fan of bringing nature in from the outside: acorns, leaves, berries are all great autumn decor and can be had for the low cost of a walk around your neighbourhood, at least in Canada.

But despite this, I continue to put out the same old decorations that I got at 90% off from when I worked at Michael’s during Uni in the 90s. A few things from thrift stores and craft fairs have made their way into the Halloween box, but most of it is over 25 years old. Other than that, we have a few pumpkins we grew this year, a few giant pumpkins we bought to carve the week before & they just sit outside next to the two Chrysanthemums on the porch until that day, and finally a handful of gourds to decorate the table. Most of the yearly decor I bring into our lives in the fall, I try to ensure is compostable.

I also was clever last December and managed to nab passes to my children’s favourite Halloween event: Frightfest. It’s basically a haunted hayride in the dark and 5 haunted houses in one evening. The tickets were on sale for $21 each, one week before Christmas last year. Compared to the eye-watering cost if you wanted to buy them now: $63 *per person*. BIG YIKES. So I bought the kids 3 tickets each so they could take two friends with them. Basically, by planning ahead I got 3 tix for the price of 1.

This year The Eldest is re-purposing last-year’s costume & The Youngest is making her own, she has most of it but we have to seek out a few things up at the thrift store next week to fill it out a bit. Historically, we’ve always made pizza and been home base from which the kids & their friends started trick-or-treating. This year The Youngest is instead going to another friend’s neighbourhood & will sleep over there (ahh the awesomeness of a weekend Halloween!). The Eldest will probably stay in the neighbourhood and Mr. Tucker and I will stay behind & give out cans of pop to the trick-or-treaters (we have soooooo much pop & we rarely drink it). Then on Saturday night we are off to an adult Halloween party with friends, so I am still trying to figure out what I will do for a costume. We’re pretty good at scroungin’ ‘round these parts so I will come up with something this week.

(as I am writing this, a huge flock of murder chickens Canada geese are flying overheard, a harbinger of winter)

A fall recap:
September: apples and leaves month!
October: gourds and spooky things!
November: poppies (and then greenery after Nov 11!)
December: Solstice and Yule season!

To me, despite the darkness and cold, it is the best quarter of the year!

Today is my children’s most dreaded day: garden cleanup day. Each kid is assigned a garden bed to clean out & compost. Mr. Tucker brings in the kale to freeze and will pot some herbs too keep in the kitchen over winter. I already did the sundried tomatoes this week and a few more soldiers are sitting on the window ledge, ripening. This is the last of the outdoor chores for this fall. The patio cushions are away, my tricycle has been put away and now everything is prepared for living beneath the snow during the cold winter months.

[1]Yes, I am a no-decorating-for-Christmas-until-after-Remembrance-Day-girlie. Some people care, some do not, it’s just a thing I have always kinda had a rule about.