This is Halloween... Part 6. Pumpkin Carving

Our favourite part of Halloween is pumpkin carving - it has become a family tradition and we have turned it into a bit of an annual 'contest'. The boys really enjoy choosing pumpkins for the family and attempt to guide us in what pictures we should all choose to carve into our pumpkins.

Invariably, they will start with the cleaning of the pumpkins and then lose interest (neither of them particularly like messy hands); they will then reappear when carving begins and proceed to tell us (their minions) how to carve their pumpkins. After that, we are left to get creative with our own pumpkins.

Here are some of our past pumpkin carving attempts...

Our last four years of pumpkin carving - some are a little strange (like D's three-eyed pumpkin).

As discussed in This is Halloween... Part 3. Decor, we also get munchkins and turn them into vampire pumpkins (using plastic dracula teeth). Super cute! And we also use pumpkins for decorating and serving food - particularly guacamole and crisps. The children LOVE the 'being sick' pumpkin. Kind of gross.

D decided that this year he would like a Darth Vader pumpkin and A decided on a 'happy smiley pumpkin' (so flipping cute!). Both boys started helping and then decided that it was easier for mum to do their pumpkins - so they became my supervisors instead. After that, D decided that he should be the judge for our annual 'Pumpkin Carving Competition'. He said that we all won - hehe!

So here they are... our 2016 Pumpkins:

Darth Vader, Harry Potter and his Patronus, a Creepy Insect/ Bat thing, Happy Pumpkin and Tinkerbell

We love looking up new ideas online and then we enjoy trying them out. This is probably not the greatest idea, as there are so many gorgeous FREE templates these days online; but we like having a bit of artistic freedom.

Have you carved pumpkins? We'd love to see them! Please send us a pic, or comment below.

Did you know? Boston holds the record for the most Jack O'Lanterns lit at the same time. The record is for over 30 000!!!!

Last day of my week of Halloween fun tomorrow - hoping to see you then!

Kalli x

This Halloween... Part 3. Decor.

Before our children, my husband and I would host Halloween parties for our friends (and everyone would dress up too). The parties would consist of scary decorations, some food and interesting drinks. 

These days, our Halloween parties are a lot more child-friendly. Some of our old Halloween decorations had to be ditched, as we were concerned that they might be too scary for the children. So we now have a lot of bats, pumpkins, cartoon ghosts and spider webs (which my husband is not thrilled about, as he isn't a big fan of spiders). 

We really wanted to do a Halloween Tree - love this one from All That Glitters. Isn't it cute? But we have been invited to Halloween parties this year - so aren't hosting any festivities and as a result will probably only decorate our door and entrance hall. I have also battled to find our Halloween decorations in our garage, and have absolutely no idea where our Christmas tree is, so this will have to be a project for next year. 

Halloween Tree from All That Glitters

While looking online for decorations - I came across a fantastic Halloween Offer on +Ocado for pumpkins, decorations, sweets and costumes. Who doesn't like 50% off deals, 3-for-2 and buy 1 and get 1 free on fun-size sweets - I really need to stock up on those (they are my favourite treat - for the trick or treaters, of course)! 

When decorating for Halloween. These are the things that I really focus on to make my house ready for Spooky Fun.

I absolutely love using pumpkins to decorate. We carve pumpkins every year - I will give details of our pumpkin carving 'competition' later in the week; but I also love having pumpkins on display. My favourite pumpkins are the little munchkin ones (especially when you put dracula fangs into them and turn them into Vampire Pumpkins) and I also love the slightly odd looking ones. 

This year, it has become quite vogue to paint your pumpkins, instead of carving them. I like the idea but I really love this idea that I saw online - Crayon Drip Art Pumpkins. So pretty. 

Crayon Drip Pumpkin from The Swell Designer

I tend to love an orange and black theme - those colours are, after all, the traditional Halloween colours. It is also really cheap to order plain coloured party decorations; and they look really effective. I am not a huge fan of 'branded' or designed party decorations. Other colour themes that I have seen that also look lovely are antique-like (browns and blacks etc), black and white, green and black, and adding some purple into the orange and black.

Spider Webs are great to make any area look spooky and are another VERY cheap decor item and they look great. You can also get really realistic looking spiders or, as is the case in our house, very fake looking spiders! 

I have always wanted to go all out on our house for Halloween, however Halloween is still not as popular in the UK as it is in America; and we live on a rather quiet cul-de-sac, so chances are, nobody would ever see it. We have, however, decided that we will be decorating our door this year - or rather turning it into a monster. I will post an updated photo tomorrow on Instagram and Facebook.

We also usually stick up cut-out bats, use candelabra on our dinner table, we have an awful foam gravestone set (that we have used for ages) that we put up and we 'bury' the foam skeleton parts nearby - it really is awful but everyone loves it. We also have a massive 3D paper spider that we put up. 

Last year, I also bought some paper light shades, that stayed up until June - I had obviously gotten so used to them. So embarrassing! We also had a 'help yourself to treats' counter, which was amazing. I own a lot of glass jars and bottles, but managed to source loads more from charity shops and got some really cool ones from Poundland!!! 

I have only just started taking proper photos of all of our events - so here are some from the past. Please excuse the quality. 

Some of our Halloween decor from previous years. We really do enjoy Halloween, as you can see. 

What great decorating tips do you have for Halloween? Please let me know in the comments below. 

Did you know? We use Orange and Black colours for Halloween because the orange signifies Autumn and harvest. The black is the connection to the dark and the Day of the Dead  that is celebrated by many cultures and is often associated with Halloween.

Hope that you will join me tomorrow for more Halloween fun! 

Kalli x