My son’s first Halloween craft was a handprint pumpkin, and it was pure chaos. He smeared orange paint across the table, across his own belly, and somehow across my shirt too.  But that little orange handprint still hangs on my fridge every October. That’s what toddler crafts really are. Not a finished project. A tiny…

Last October, I set up a “simple” pumpkin craft for my daughter’s preschool class.  Within two minutes, one kid had orange paint on his eyebrows, another had glued her fingers together, and someone tried to eat a pom-pom.  We survived.  The pumpkins turned out adorable. And I learned that with preschoolers, simple really has to…

Two years ago, I had twenty dollars and a mostly empty house to decorate for Halloween. I walked into the dollar store with zero plan.  I walked out with cheesecloth, mason jars, and a can of black spray paint. By the end of that weekend, my porch looked like I’d spent way more than I…

Three years ago, I got tired of pulling the same plastic skeleton out of a bin every October. It looked cheap. It looked tired.  So I pulled dried florals, black candles, and a glue gun onto my kitchen table instead. Two hours later, my mantel looked like something out of a design magazine, not a…

Last October, my kitchen table turned into a glittering crime scene. My daughter had glue on her elbows. My son had orange paint in his hair. Somehow one pom-pom ended up stuck to the dog.  And when they finally held up their finished pumpkins, they beamed like they’d just won an award. That’s the magic…

The first Hello Kitty pumpkin I made sat on my desk for weeks. It was tiny. It was pink. It had a huge satin bow glued right on top. My roommate walked in and gasped. She asked where I bought it. I told her I made it in twenty minutes.  That was the moment I…

The first time I carved a mouse ears silhouette into a pumpkin, I honestly did not expect much of a reaction.  But when I set it out on the porch that night, three different trick or treaters stopped just to point at it before they even reached for candy.  That little moment sold me completely…

The first year I skipped orange pumpkins entirely, I felt a little nervous walking up to my own front porch. Would it look bare? Boring?  Instead, my sister in law stood on my steps and asked if I had bought everything from a boutique florist.  All I had done was swap orange for creamy white,…

A few years ago, I stood in my driveway staring at a pile of orange pumpkins and felt nothing. No spark, no excitement, just a tired sigh and the thought “here we go again.”  So on a whim, I grabbed a can of pink spray paint from my garage shelf and coated one pumpkin just…

My cat has never once helped me carve a pumpkin, but she absolutely supervises. Every October she plants herself on the kitchen table, tail flicking, watching me scoop pumpkin guts like it’s the most important task I’ll do all year.  Last Halloween I finally carved a pumpkin that actually looked like her — pointed ears,…

The year I finally swapped my usual orange pumpkins for a few white ones, my porch stopped looking like a Halloween store display and started looking like something out of a magazine.  I hadn’t even done anything fancy — just a couple of creamy white pumpkins mixed in with dried grasses and a cream pumpkin…

Last year I spent three hours meticulously carving a “spooky forest scene” pumpkin while my roommate spent five minutes stabbing two crooked holes, sticking on a pair of googly eyes, and writing “I’m having a gourd time” in paint pen underneath.  Guess whose pumpkin got more laughs at the party — and whose got reposted…