When I was a child Halloween was innocent fun. When I was 6, I dressed as the Statue of Liberty. My brother Dennis was an astronaut. When I was about 8, I dressed as a gypsy. When I was 9 I wore my mother’s wedding dress. Her dress was from the 1960’s and was calf length so it fit me as a full length dress. When I became a Christian, my A of G church’s youth group had a Halloween party and I dressed as Charlie Chaplin. When I got married and started having children, I began to worry about whether it was the right thing to do to celebrate Halloween. This got compounded with the fact that many houses near me were decorating it to be horribly scary. Witches and ghosts and Frankenstein’s monsters I would have found acceptable but hanging corpses and dismembered body parts coming out of graves while eerie noises and screams were heard coming from these houses convinced me not to allow my children to trick or treat. It was so bad, I didn’t feel comfortable walking to the local shops with my children as we had to past these houses.
There is a 4 1/2 year gap between my first three children and my second three children. When my children got older, my oldest ones criticized me for not allowing them to go trick or treating all those years. I held my ground until we moved to our current neighbourhood here in England. People in England generally don’t celebrate Halloween much but those that do tend to think of the holiday as completely a scary one. Almost all little girl costumes are witches and boys are vampires or werewolves. People are surprised when I tell them that in the US many children dress as princesses and super heroes. The reason I finally allowed my children to celebrate the holiday was because just directly across the street from us is another US/UK couple with two small boys. The dad loves to do Halloween BIG. He is a kid at heart and a great dad. He plans Halloween for weeks and every year we don’t know what he’s going to do. One year, he put on a show for the kids with a mad scientist and a lot of humour. Another year, he made sort of a maze with sheets in his drive and had people pop out in costumes to be just a little scary but not too scary. The decorations are all on the fun side of scary made for small children to enjoy. As this is a rarity in England, our small village now gets in on the festivities and children can go door to door and ask for treats. We use to live in another part of England and nobody celebrated it.
When I allowed my three youngest to take part in Halloween, they were already old enough to know what I didn’t like about it and why I was now allowing it within reason. The rules being no scary costumes and this was all about socializing and getting to know our neighbours. With that said, I want to share some wonderful photos I have found online of Halloween decorations, crafts and costumes that are wholesome fun and beautiful!
Except for the sign in front, this could simply be considered an autumn decoration. I have bought these same type of flowers and have planted them in a large pumpkin (keep in pot before putting it in a pumpkin otherwise it will decay quickly) and will leave this out in my front garden so trick or treat-ers will know to come.
This is a decoupage pumpkin which can be found on Etsy but it looks easy enough to make.
The above photo is from another blogger I follow. www.betweennapsontheporch.net. She does some amazing home décor and crafts.
How cute is this???
I love this idea!
Creatively different! Fun Aliens!
And now for costumes:
How cute is this homemade Sun-maid costume? I love it when parents take the time to get crafty!
This is a wheelchair costume. I came across this last year and it brought tears to my eyes. Wonderful! Here are a few more:
Let’s keep Halloween wholesome, creative, safe and fun for kids.
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