Making Decorations

When October rolled around this year, Joss was adamant that we have decorations. I blame his kindergarten teachers for this.

 He kept bringing home artworks he'd made at school (and since he has two schools, there was twice as much art). 

 I certainly displayed all of his masterpieces.

But even that wasn't enough Halloween cheer for him. When I was slow to understand the level of decorating we needed, Joss took matters into his own hands. 

[click to enlarge] Joss colored, cut and hung two dozen or more Halloween-themed decorations throughout the house. This is just a sampling, but it gives you an idea of his range of artwork and the variety of places that he liked to hang it.

I responded by getting on Pinterest. This is the only picture I have of the Halloween candles we made. We managed to break a glass as we were setting them up, but the bases lit up and looked pretty spooky. Joss was not to be placated so easily. (Look. He really wanted huge inflatables in the front yard. Rob has sworn that he will not have inflatables in the front yard, not just because he doesn't like most of them, but also because he disagrees with using the energy. I'm just trying to work within the confines of two very opinionated McMen).

So I put together a front table of potions, including Attraction Oil, Eye of Snake, Scat of Bat, Scale of Dragon, Confusion Powder, Essence of Terror, Vanishing Potion, and Hallucination Tonic. Joss was mollified, though he kept wanting to try out some of them. I was worried because it really did look like we might be growing something hallucinogenic in some of those bottles.

And finally, we carved pumpkins. There was another strong superhero theme in the pumpkins as well as the costumes, although they floated some Serenity and Dr. Who ideas as well.

Joss was finally appeased, and I was left worrying about how I would keep up with the onslaught of Thanksgiving and Christmas expectations.