Celebrating 10 (or is it 11?) Halloweens Together

It's hard to believe November has rolled in. It's one of our favorite times of year, and means we have a new Halloween roundup to share from all the weekend activities if you care to see! We mostly spent time hanging out on our front steps with our last-minute lone jack-o-lantern, a couple glasses of spirits, our big cauldron of candy and Basil by our side to keep a watchful eye out for all the trick-or-treaters. Trick-or-treating can be hit or miss on our street since we're just outside the swell of Hanover Avenue, where the streets are closed down and the real Halloween crowds congregate.

Halloween is actually the anniversary of when Mary and I first started dating. When we got married, we agreed we'd stop celebrating our anniversary on Halloween, reserving the more meaningful celebrations for each June, during our wedding anniversary. That worked just fine last year (and will again next year), but this Halloween was special, since it marked the 10 year anniversary of when we first got together.

We decided we'll officially celebrate over a fancy dinner while in New York this week, but did take the chance to surprise each-other with a couple cards and make verbal walks down memory lane throughout the day. It's incredible to think it's been this long, since time has seemed to fly by, but also a good reminder of just how far we've come when actually taking the time to chat about where we were, what we were doing and who we were a decade ago. The one thing that remains constant — we're in this thing together and look forward to what the future holds.

If you care to share a laugh (or cringe), these are some pics from early in our relationship:

Click collage to expand.

You can read more about why we celebrate our anniversary on Halloween and get the history behind the pics above in this post from our 7 year anniversary, which much to Mary's surprise happened to be the night I proposed.

OK, back to this Halloween! Walking down Hanover Avenue the morning of Halloween is shaping up to be a favorite yearly tradition (see a recap from our walk last year here). We walk the streets of the fan most every morning with Basil, watching the sidewalks change with the seasons (fall being the prettiest) and Hanover Avenue is usually just a little outside our regular route.

The reason we make the extra effort this time of year is for all the Halloween decorations. Like I mentioned earlier, this street in our Fan neighborhood is known for shutting down the streets, famously spectacular house decorations and a safe place to bring kids for trick-or-treating. The homeowners also seem to wait the day of Halloween to "bring out the big guns," fully decking out houses with decorations. We love walking that way Halloween morning, getting a chance to see everything as it's put out in anticipation of the fun to come later.

Our walk usually looks like the picturesque city side streets you see in the shot above, but as we get closer to Hanover Avenue, things start to look decidedly more creepy:

The houses always seem to up the ante each year in terms of decorations, too. This year there were even more spiderweb lined yards and graveyard lined hedges:

This year we even caught a glimpse at a flock of skeleton yard flamingos! These would make a fun Halloween DIY project for future years:

Our favorite house on Hanover with the weim statues out front didn't disappoint. Last year the weims had full costumes on, and this year they were draped in spiderwebs, helping to keep a watch on things:

Speaking of weims, Basil always falls for this big blow-up cat:

Last year we took a video of him barking at this giant cat (that moves and hisses), and this year we thought he might not react — but oh, were we wrong. Evidently there must have been some undone agenda between the two.

And this year, there was new curious "decor" to investigate:

It's fun to see which houses really go the extra mile...

This year the trend seemed to be scary clowns, and this one peering out of the hedges of one home just may have been the scariest clown either of us have ever seen:

As you can probably gather, we enjoyed the day and evening — Halloween will always hold special meaning for us and it's been fun developing a few new traditions since moving into the neighborhood.

For those curious about our Halloween jack-o-lantern this year, it was a bit of a last-minute effort. We had the lone bumpy pumpkin leftover from our pumpkin patch trip with the kids and didn't get to decorating it with Virginia during her stay. She told us to keep it and snap a pic once it was carved, so around 6pm on Halloween Tim pulled out the power drill and we put a hole saw attachment on it to quickly drill 3 giant circles into the pumpkin.

With a little decorative carving work around the holes using linoleum block carving tools, we had ourselves a pumpkin lit up and ready to welcome all the little visitors:

You can see shots and projects for all the pumpkin designs we've tackled over past years below. Did you celebrate this year? What Halloween traditions are your favorite?

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