Right here is it the BIG update - honestly how do the people that blog daily and with big long postings do it ? I barely have time to sit let alone do all it takes to blog more than once a week. Any way I digress the kids have been off all week on Half Term and it was such a busy week what with a Pumpkin festival and Halloween and Mask Day and Line dancing which is maybe why blogging it all was so hard.


First was the line dancing - Caitlin had a class at Brownies with a proper teacher and won a certificate for best dancer in her age group, she loved it - Nana she must have got that skill from you I think because I still have two left feet.


They dressed up in cowboy stuff but do you think I could find a cowboy hat in this town? Every hat in the costume shop was gone due to 30 Brownies all dressing up so we had to improvise.

Next came Mask day at school - this happens every year on the last day of term before Halloween, the kids make a mask and bring money in for charity to enter their mask into the competition - this was Caitlin's puppy and she won a homework pass for her efforts.


Last weekend the Pumpkin festival was on in town and it was as BIG and exciting as last year. We went down for the opening ceremony on Friday - it was a sight to behold I can tell you

They had pumpkins carved by local school kids lining the street that are all alight and then they switch off the lights in the town and a Parade of fire walkers on stilts and samba dancers and drum band came down the street and it ended when a huge "chandelier of light"was hoisted into the air. It was a fantastic atmosphere and the girls had a ball, Becca with her friends who I was introduced too and Caitlin with her friends from school, even Rachel had a ball dancing to the band like a mad little Ewok.


Sunday at the end of the festival was a huge firework display - every year it gets bigger and better. There was so much on all weekend , fancy dress parties and pumpkin Olympics and an organic market. The town really does itself proud .



Then if course we had that mad snow out of nowhere. It came down in blizzard like fury and then was gone the next day in quite balmy conditions for October - now don't tell me the weather isn't completely crazy nowadays.


Which all led nicely up to Halloween - we carved pumpkins, Becca decide she wanted a Hello Kitty pumpkin could I find a pattern ? No of course not so I had to draw it free hand and carve it that way - it was hard but she loved it.




I made another banner this time for the window -

Well actually it was Caitlin's idea but she wimped out of the production half way through "Halloween" it did take a while to complete as every letter was inked and embossed with black glitter embossing powder.


I also made these bottles with labels found on the web to decorate the treat table and bagged up over 50 bags of goodies which vanished as if by magic at a rapid rate on Halloween.


Mind you our house did practically say come on in trick or treater's we didn't go too mad but you could tell we had goodies.


Our own little trick or treaters got ready - Caitlin decided to be the Queen of Heart's mainly because she loves that red dress I think so we made up a plate of tarts to go with it and added hearts to her costume and crown.

Rachel had the cutest pumpkin outfit and although we weren't sure how she would react to the whole thing due to a week of her being frightened of the "wooooh's " as she liked to call it .

But she loved the whole thing , she loved answering the door to the kids and kept giving away all the goodies and when we finally got out ourselves she adored ringing the bells and saying "dank u" to everyone - we actually only went to houses we knew were taking part and were friendly which I think helped.
The worst thing about it all is we ran out of sweets - I am astounded at how many called I mean we had the 50 bags and a huge bowl of leftover "just in case" sweets and then we got 3 more bumper bags of sweets from Jennie's and we still ran out - mind you one group admitted to calling twice and some kids had sackfuls of sweets so must have gone to every house in town. I made a sign up for the door saying "sorry it is all gone" at about half past eight and we got 5 more groups call to the door - one group even stole my sign !! Go figure !!

Next year I am just going to pack up more or do what a lot of people did switch all the lights off and pretend to be out LOL


Finally I will leave you with a layout of last year's haul as I have been a lazy girl and haven't scrapped a thing - starting to wonder if I remember how too.