Following my quest to show you the 'madness' (in a nice way) that goes on over here and my efforts to try and understand Halloween, here's part two of my findings :)
Melchett and I went out on a Halloween Decorations Walk Hunt this morning. This is some of the stuff appearing, and bear in mind it's still only 8th October here, we've got a while to go before the night itself, so we're expecting lots more...
This dead body appeared out of the ground last week. He lights up at night. It's quite freaky. Melchett says it's George Washington, because he's got white hair....I'm not totally convinced...
Melchett doesn't like spiders at the best of times...you know what they say about America - they do everything bigger over here.
Those cobwebs are a huge part of decorating the fronts of houses here....they are appearing all over trees, cacti, bushes etc.
The other interesting thing is the highly eclectic nature of decor. There seem to be 3 styles of Halloween decorations you can buy:
- Kitsch, cartoony stuff - Caspar the friendly ghost, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, smiley pumpkins, cute black cats etc
- Classic gothic darkness - black silhouettes, ravens, Edgar Allen Poe portraits, beautifully carved pumpkins, possibly the Martha Stewart school of halloween decorating, making your front lawn look like a graveyard with a variety of headstones:
- Really really scarey stuff - for the Saw generation, freaky zombies, werewolves, lots of blood, highly 'realistic':
These are just scarey. Even Goth Child didn't like being too close to them for too long.
But the interesting thing on the houses we've seen decorated so far is that people seem to be picking and choosing from these 3 main styles - they mix and match cutesy with scarey:
Lots of trees seem to be developing severe cases of ghosti-itis:
Now that I do seem to be warming to. I've begun to think that one thing I could get into is the crafty-side of Halloween. You know me, any excuse to make things. And the girls seem pretty keen to make some stuff during half-term (Fall Break) too, so a trip to the Goodwill AZ store to buy some white sheets to cut up into mini-ghosts could be in order.
So that's it for today's Halloween watch....coming tomorrow Halloween Watch pt 3 - America's quest for the perfect Halloween costume and having a Green Halloween on National Costume Swap Day (no, I'm not kidding you, as I keep on saying - Halloween is BIG here).
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