Hiya Folks!

Ronja here to give you the big juicy details now that Halloween is done and dusted and the decorations have started coming down.

We’ve been slowly accumulating a hoard of Halloween decorations to put up every year consisting of lights, bunting, cups, napkins, and big pile of scary masks. This year we managed to find some spooky tablecloths, spiderweb, and a pair tacky-cute wine glasses. We also had the absolutely terrible idea to build and dress a scarecrow to put in the driveway with a lantern in it’s hand, and managed to spook our neighbours, loads of trick or treaters, and mainly ourselves whenever we’d catch a glimpse of it out the windows.

We’ve built a tradition of having a couple friends over around Halloween to cook and carve pumpkins, as well as enjoying some spooky drinks and way too many sweets. We always cook a lot with the pumpkin, and I try to slot in at least one new thing each time, so this year we ended up with pumpkin soup, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice liqueur, pumpkin whisky, and some pumpkin puree for Ethel – and we save the seeds from all the pumpkins to be roasted after carving. This year we got a total of 11 pumpkins – 2 for cooking and 9 for carving – and while I was busy cooking, baking, and infusing drinks, Matt and our friends carved all the lanterns over Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday (Halloween) we got a total of 98 trick or treaters! We dressed up ourselves and the front of the house and managed to get some very good reactions from kids and adults alike. Some kids we’re a bit scared to approach the smiling man handing out sweets with the scarecrow standing guard, but would eventually approach at their parents encouragement. We got many compliments, and saw a lot of amazing costumes too. Can’t wait for next year!