Day of the Dead

November 3.
All Soul's Day is known as the Day of the Dead here in southern California.
Here's a picture of my son-in-law ready to play polo - in Day of the Dead costume!









And here he is again, with his wife.

Halloween Day

Happy Halloween!
I don't know if you can see anything in this picture -- but that's my oldest daughter and her husband dressed for a Halloween party last year. They went as a Day of the Dead couple.

Quick.
Run over to the Three Silly Chicks and enter their contest.
It's easy.
To enter, just tell them what Halloween candy you get dibs on.
They're going to give away a copy of Carolyn's book WHERE'S MY MUMMY? to the winner of a random drawing.

I am a little disappointed that the three chicks (the silly ones with glasses at the top of the blog) aren't in Halloween costume this year. The 8-year old enjoyed seeing how funny they looked last year.

I have it easy -- I only buy candy that my family likes. Then we get to eat the leftovers. And since we live in a 17th century stone farmhouse between two developments, it takes a really brave bunch of kids to creep onto our back porch and grab candy from the candy bowl I leave out there. (They've changed the road over the centuries. Now no one can actually get at our front porch any more.)

Unfortunately, when the 8-year old comes back from Trick or Treating tonight, we'll have more candy than we know what to do with. What do you do with your masses of candy?
We put it into three piles.
1- a pile of candy the 8-year old likes
2 - a pile of candy the adults like
3 - a pile of candy that no one likes and will be taken into my library workplace to be given to the teen volunteers there.

Piles one and two will have some overlap, so there may be a bit of tussling over some candy.

If piles one and two are still around in a couple of weeks -- out it goes. None of this saving the candy until Easter, like my parents did -- and then finding it stored on top of the refrigerator.
-wendieOld

The Day of the Dead is a Coming

Good Lord. Here I was hesitant to mention my Halloween book in August for fear it would be too early to do so, and over at La Bloga they're discussing Day of the Dead books. One is a really neat craft book.

The 8-year old and I saw a whole aisle of Halloween stuff on the shelves at our local grocery store.

Maybe Halloween has become like Christmas -- On second thought, no. We plan for the Christmas season for 6 months ahead and then recover from it for 6 months after. I can't see us doing that for Halloween. (I probably shouldn't mention that stash of leftover Halloween candy I finally tossed out with the Spring Cleaning.)

Anywho -- somebody's looking forward to Halloween 'cause Amazon.com shows a goodly lot of sales for the Halloween Book of Facts and Fun. Which means that next May I might see some royalties from it. Hooray!
-wendieO