Halloween is always fun. And there are always challenges. Living in a rural/semi-rural area (technically it’s a small village, or hamlet) is also both – fun, and challenging. There are definitely pros – it was easy to isolate during covid. Isolation is our natural state. It’s beautiful being surrounded by trees. And also cons – it can be hard to get deliveries. There is no Uber Eats or corner shop if you run out of milk. This time last year I...
Read MoreHalloween 2021 – Covid-19 Tips
Who would have thought we’d still be battling Covid-19 for Halloween in 2021? Last year everything was still kind of new, with people unsure whether trick-or-treating would go ahead at all, making it very hard to plan – both families just wanting to have fun, and retailers whose business depended on selling halloween products. There were some truly creative solutions created – have a look at all of the different halloween chutes in the pinterest board...
Read MoreHalloween Parties Inside
It’s September now, and time to knuckle down and plan the details for Halloween. When the kids were younger we spent a few years living in Tokyo.It was great fun – we lived across the road from their school – and there was a great community of expats, most of whom were American. So they really knew how to throw a cool Halloween Party. One of the best parties was inside a small unit in the middle of Tokyo.You don’t necessarily need a large house and...
Read MoreHalloween 2020 and Covid-19
It’s late August, and in most years, Halloween addicts are deep in planning how they’ll celebrate Halloween: How will I decorate the house this year?Will I have a party?What sort of treats will I hand out to kids?What costume will the kids wear?What costume will I wear? Halloween 2019 was a non-event for me, for the first time in 15 years. I’d sold my house, given the majority of my halloween decorations to the kids next door, reduced everything I owned to...
Read MoreA green halloween
I think by now, everybody realises we can’t keep doing things the same old way, and still have a healthy planet (thank you Greta) and healthy bodies. Halloween needs to be more green than orange… Halloween doesn’t have to mean buying bags of lollies individually wrapped in plastic, costumes made of cheap vinyl, toxic PVC masks, plastic pumpkins that break on the way home, decorations that end up on the garbage heap and traffic jams from driving to the next...
Read MoreHalloween 2019
And now for something completely different. I swear we were in front of the zeitgeist, not in response to it, but we’re escaping from the city. At Christmas we went on holiday to Byron Bay, and made an offer on a block of land in the hinterland, with views to the mountains. A little bit impulsive, but actually quite logical, given family nearby. Any the first thing I did when I got home (apart from putting my house on the market) was to offer all of my halloween...
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