If not living under a rock, everyone knows it is sacrilegious to not put pumpkins on everything in October.  So that is what I do, and that is ALL I do in October.  I love October because it is my birthday, but the Grinch is to Christmas as I am to Halloween.

So I do participate in putting Pumpkins on everything…

My boys are obsessed with miniature pumpkins, my little one in particular.  I have a sneaking suspicion they really  just love the tradition of throwing them into the woods in the back for the animals to eat.  This all includes great hopes that pumpkin vines may grow, but we only have actually been in the woods a handful of times.  Now that creepy clowns are roaming the country we probably never will again.  So we will never know if the pumpkins’ legacy will continue.

But every October my little guy gets excited to see those little pumpkins.  So as soon as he sees them we buy them and start the “Halloween” decorating. At first I like it, and it looks like this….

Then one trip to Target and that little “five spot” entangles you and your children and the only way out is to purchase one or seven things that seem like a great idea at the time, until hitting the cash register.  Then the Target phenomena kicks in, and a quick trip for dish soap and parchment paper somehow ends up costing you over a hundred dollars.   This is a mystery I cannot solve. Last, that banner that was supposed to look awesome, but looks less than desirable cannot be removed because it was decorated with my children…

Then the strangest, creepiest, scariest mystery of all happens.  A hand appears right in my pictures, as if the banner isn’t sharing worthy and the universe is trying to tell me!  I don’t listen…

I decided looking for fall foliage for the mantel would make the look complete.  I asked the babes to find the prettiest orange and red trees they could.  My thinking was they would cut the branches.  It took awhile for the leaves to start changing, but eventually they were able to locate some trees.  Of course the trees they located were not in areas I would feel comfortable trimming.  So this backfired slightly, as I ended up out the sunroof of my favorite accomplice’s minivan.  It was loaded with kids at the time.  All the kids were yelling stop, and I think the word stealing may have been used in the fits of embarrassment from my older boy.  I really wasn’t stealing, the tree was on the side of the road close to the middle of nowhere.  I promise.  Excuse the bad angle of the picture…

But it looks pretty good.  Worth the craziness of hanging out of the sunroof at unsightly angles.

To top off the mantel, the boys received one of their MiMi’s famous packages filled with Halloween loot. The kind of package that takes the kitchen table from clean to covered in 60 seconds.  

Notice the little backpack and little boy opening the package in the background.  It is all so sweet: him, my mom, the excitement.  Until my friend comes to pick me up for a birthday party and thinks our place has been ransacked by savage thieves.  The boys added these lovely black crows from their packages,  which squawk incessantly, whether someone is in the room or not.

This is the story of our October mantel has come to be.  I love the traditions my boys look forward to, even though so small.   Being outside, picking up pumpkins, and looking for foliage are things they do every fall.  In all seriousness, I do love those mini-pumpkins.  They bring a fall feel to the house, without the creepiness of Halloween. This whole mantel cost under ten dollars.  I love decorating with with things that are ALIVE and AUTHENTIC. Part of this is because the only thing I like fake is fur.  Most of the fake stuff is produced in China, and only fills landfills. Sadly, that is where those crows will eventually end up.  The second part is I don’t like plastic bin after bin of plastic decorations clogging up my space.  The last part really is I have so many Christmas bins, I really have no room for any other holiday (insert wink).

EVERYONE has their favorite holiday, and their very own right to hoard as many bins to celebrate that holiday as they wish.