decorating: it’s all in the little touches

It may pain you to know this, and I am sorry, but I am not much of the decorating type.  This is true not just of my house in general, but my approach to holidays as well.

As much as I adore Halloween, I’m not moved much beyond the pumpkin-carving aspect of accoutering our abode.  MUCH to the chagrin and dismay of the resident six-year-old, particularly as we live in direct view of a family that believes every holiday deserves its full due of indoor and outdoor ornamentation. Yes, there are inflatables.

To appease Miss Megs, and because I thought it was fun and a great use for all those blessed plastic bags we can’t possibly get our newspaper delivered without, one early October day we made a dozen or so cute ghosts to hang in the trees.

Whaddya mean, you’ve never seen a green ghost?  Don’t tell my girls.  Me, I was amused by the double entendre.   Green, and green, get it?  Hah.

And because we have a Halloween advent calendar, courtesy some relative, I dutifully hung that baby up.  And then, because there was still a lot of sadness and general gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes over the great undecoratedness of our abode, I ponied up the idea that we could make it a tradition every year to go and pick out a new halloween decoration.  I’m all about Making Childhood Memorable and Fun.  Really, I am.  I’m just not about buying, owning, or storing a bunch of stuff.

Megs immediately began lobbying hard for a full complement of faux tombstones like she saw in front of the house a few blocks down. I don’t mean to crush her dreams, but I can tell you there will be a real one planted with my name engraved thereon before there are any fake ones in my yard.  Witches, ghosts, black cats, pumpkins, yes.  Skeletons,  graveyards, tombstones, scary shit or gruesome anything, not so much.

We settled on pumpkin-shaped lights.

But apparently that benefaction, and even the promise of more to come, didn’t quite live up to her vision of House Halloween.  Because one weekend morning, these and others popped up all over the downstairs:

I hated to take them down, they’re so daggone cute, but hey — it’s time to start decorating for Thanksgiving, you know.

I’m just one vase of autumn-toned flowers on the table away from being done.