Home Sweet Boat...

...or is it Boat Sweet Home? I'm really not sure.

Anyway, even though the days are still pretty hot here in Florida, I can feel a slight shift as we move into autumn which has always been my favorite time of the year.

I believe Halloween is my all time favorite holiday, and I remember like it was yesterday how excited my sister and I were every year when it came time to carve our pumpkins. I also remember my sister's brainstorm that involved us stealing our mother's tin cookie cutters in order to make intricate and what she thought would be very original designs on our pumpkins. Her brilliant plan failed in a spectacular way and all we did was completely ruin the cookie cutters as they crumpled and collapsed under the pressure of us trying to shove them in to thick and unforgiving pumpkin flesh.

To this day I don't think my mother knows what we did. I think I'll spill the beans when we go back home for Christmas, especially since I can tell Mom it was Cindy's idea and not mine.

I'll take my points any way I can.

When I had kids I just assumed they'd love Halloween as much as I did. However, doing things like carving pumpkins lost a lot of its flavor with the advent of cable TV and video games. Therefore, I ended up doing all the carving myself and after awhile I just gave it up.

The kids never even noticed this small detail but they did appreciate the very detailed costumes I made for them. Someday I'll dig out some pictures and post them.

But now that we're living on a boat and are really restricted as to how much holiday decorating we can do, well, it bothered me. So I bought a pumpkin at Publix and a stencil kit at the Dollar Tree, and got to work.


Here is the stencil attached to my pumpkin with duct tape. Of course the tiny little serrated knife that came with the kit broke immediately so I ended up using one of mine.










I was busy carving ashore, and Wilbur, who was stuck on board, was not impressed.



"Mama, I don't like that big orange thing, and that ugly pink bird is taunting me!"






You see, in addition to the pumpkin, I also lucked upon a pink flamingo (and I absolutely was not going to feel like I was 'home' until I had my own tacky piece of home decor)!


So I now have an evil pumpkin and a flamingo that's artistically decked out in a Halloween themed kerchief and scarf.


Wilbur finally got up close and personal with his taunters.

"You talkin' to me??" He asks the flamingo.









"You talkin' to me??" He asks the pumpkin.














"Mama! Did you hear them? They was talkin' to the pitty and they was mean!"

Poor Wilbur.

Just wait until Thanksgiving. I can't even imagine what a flamingo, dressed as a pilgrim, will say to a poor little pit bull.







Happy Halloween!