Celebrating the first Halloween on Planet Baby

Hello, lovely PB friends! Now I finally have a moment to share with you all how we celebrated our first Halloween on Planet Baby. Both Mr PB and I made it through our 40 years on this planet without a single bit of Halloween celebration. Zip, nada, nothing. It’s just not the tradition here in Australia with our British background. But in recent years, it’s slowly been seeping into public consciousness, don’t you think? For weeks, I’ve been noticing all the North American blog posts about it and the preparations people were making. Did it register with me? Um, no. I just ticked the ‘Mark all as read’ box for those posts in Google Reader and kept on scrolling.

Until late on last Friday afternoon, that is. Mr PB informed me, ever so casually (he knows me well), that we would be celebrating Halloween on PB this year. I muttered something inaudible and turned back to loading the washing machine. Sensing (correctly) that I was less than impressed at the thought of any extra work, Mr PB then turned his most-creative-and-lateral-thinking mind to the task. I left him to it. The end result? Mr PB excelled himself. I’ll let these photos tell the story.

The decorations

Here are his decorating efforts outside our house. He strung up these black and white crepe streamers to create a huge spider web, complete with gigantic spiders.

Then he moved on up the street and decorated the neighbours’ letter boxes as well. Here's one.

 

He carved out some pumpkins and lit them with candles.

   

The neighbourhood children made drawings to stick on our outside wall.

The food and drink

He and the older pixies cooked (and bought) scary-looking cakes.
 

There were bowls of blood-like tomato sauce to accompany the cocktail sausages. There was blood-like red cordial (hmm, what was he thinking?!) in these evil cups.

The outfits

He created a witch’s hat (with pink, of course) for Miss India to accompany her outfit. The next-door neighbour teased her hair, witchy-style. Joshie was replaced by a terrible ghoul. And Mr PB morphed into a haunting ghost, complete with jack-o’-lantern. Here's the family (Sammy and I were interested onlookers).

The necessary accessories such as broomsticks, pitchforks and baskets for loot were sourced.

The party

Then at 4.30 pm, the whole neighbourhood arrived, en masse. Suddenly, six little children were seated at the table, all bedecked in Halloween costumes. I looked on in amazement, with wriggling Sammy on my hip. Mr PB had really pulled it off! Our little verandah had been transformed into a children’s wonderworld. Their drawings adorned the walls. The orange-and-red-tablecloth-bedecked tables were groaning with ghostly food. The jack-o’-lanterns were flickering away merrily.

Six little costumed children were gleefully tucking into the plentiful scary food. Their parents were looking on with beaming faces. And Mr PB was king of the kids, darting about here and there, in his element. I grabbed the camera and kept snapping (or as easily as one can with a squirming Houdini wriggling on one’s hip, all 12 kg of him!).

The games

My clever husband had also arranged the entertainment. We had the good old-fashioned apple bob which absolutely fascinated the children. They were mesmerised by this simple concept, spending ages plunging their faces into the water in an attempt to capture bobbing apples in their mouths. Here they are at it. 

 

Mr PB couldn’t help himself, plunging his face into the water, only to emerge with dramatic effect!

 

Then we had the good-old-dangling-doughnuts-from-a-broomstick-challenge which was also a huge hit. Look at the joy on India's face!

That was then followed by the inaugural Roll-your-pumpkin-down-the-street race. We closed off our street and the children assumed their positions at the starting line. Mr PB gave them all a pumpkin and wrote their house number with a texta on the side. He ran out of pumpkins so Miss India ended up with an onion (just as well she’s too young to realise what a dud she was handed!). Here they are.

Then, the Great Roll started! Here’s an action shot.

It was hilarious. Children and parents bounded down the street, chasing the pumpkins to work out which one finished first (hmm, we forgot to mark a finish line so the result was a little, well, dubious!). We ended up making it a best-of-three as the children were having so much fun.

The trick or treating

But wait! There’s more! Then the ‘trick-or-treat’ phase commenced. Mr PB and one of the mums, both bedecked in their costumes, led the children off around the neighbourhood, like the Pied Piper. All the parents in our street were prepared, with lollies at the door to greet the excited throng on their doorsteps. Here's their first stop.

I then walked inside to survey the bombshell of a house left in Mr PB’s wake. That’s the flipside – I adore his creativity, verve and imagination but I always get left to clean up the aftermath. Hmmm.

About half an hour later, Mr PB returned home with two exhausted pixies. A tired India protested loudly as I attempted to brush the knots out of her teased hair. It’s hard work being a witch! Costumed were removed, makeup was scrubbed off in the bath and finally they wearily retreated to bed. Mr PB then spent hours cleaning away the last vestiges of Halloween.

The verdict

Mr PB was exhausted but deliriously happy. He was justifiably proud of his efforts. He did such a fantastic job creating a real sense of community in our little neighbourhood. I think we may even celebrate it again next year!

So, what do you think? Do you want to hire Mr PB for your celebrations next year? Were there any obvious details we missed? You North American PB friends can probably make some suggestions on how we could improve things next year. Do share – I’m all ears!