If you’ve read more than a couple of these blog posts, you’ll know we like making stuff in this household. We are happy to put on crazy outfits for the flimsiest of reasons. Halloween is obviously a big deal for us.
For our last Halloween in the UK, we followed the traditional custom of having a party to which the Weasels invited their friends. At the time, the UK was just coming to terms with adopting the North American custom of Trick or Treating, so rather than patrolling the neighbourhood trying to finds someone who was prepared to hand out sweets, we hosted a crowd of kids in costumes.
Arriving in Canada was a bit of a revelation. People had LOADS of Halloween decorations. The shops were stuffed with special supplies of sweets, and giant inflatables. Since my first job in Canada was working at Home Depot, I got to see some of these crazy giant decorations up close…
So we have made the most of being here – we’ve added to our own collection of Halloween decorations every year, and although we don’t have an animatronic dragon (yet!), we DO have an animatronic witch who is quite creepy enough, thanks.
The last few years we’ve made a giant spiders’ web which stretches right across our driveway and supports a giant spider. Sweets get hung from the web and the kids have to pick them off. The advantage is that we don’t have to spend the whole night outside if it’s cold or rainy, just restock the web every now and then.
Now, I don’t know where this year’s idea came from, but it got settled early on that for 2022, we would have a pirate ship in the driveway. There’d be a hole in the side of the ship, and kids would have to go into the ship and find the sweets in the treasure chest.
It took a couple of false starts, but eventually, we ended up with the wreck of the good ship “Queen of Scream”, a firing cannon, five pirate skeletons, a cursed treasure chest, and a forty-five minute pirate soundscape (courtesy of Middle Weasel) that included some great pirate songs, creaking rigging, someone walking the plank, a pitched battle at sea, and a fight with the Kraken!
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