Ah, October. The beginning of the three month period that holds all of my favorite holidays.

When someone asks me what my favorite holiday is, I always give a blank look and say something along the lines of “You can choose?” My three favorite holidays are Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, in no particular order.

But surprisingly, we don’t normally decorate for Halloween. It’s not because we don’t like it, it’s because we usually would forget to until the day or so before Halloween. You know, when there is absolutely no possible way to get my hands onto anything. We usually would cut up a pumpkin, but that would be it.

Until this year.

So, we live in an apartment complex with some… dumb rules. One of which now basically bans holiday decorations from being on patios until ten days from the holiday, and must be removed two days after the holiday. For example, that means we can’t decorate our patio for Christmas until December 15th, and must have them gone by December 27th. Even though my family loves to keep our holiday decorations up until after New Years.

I happened to be talking a walk the day after this email came out, and walked past a neighbor’s apartment. Said neighbor was decorating her window with holiday decorations on October 2nd. She had one side open, so I decided to wave. She laughed out loud and said I wasn’t the first person to stop. I made a comment about the decorations, and her response was more laughter. She said she called the office to clarify the rule on decorations, and apparently the rule only applies the patios. Not windows.

Loopholes for the win!

Of course, since I found this out in early October, most decorations in stores have been sold. So, I wasn’t able to do too much. But I did get some thanks to some creative Target searching (there are four within a half hour of my doorstep), I was able to make the windows look amazing!

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This is the window right by the door. I wanted to do something with Mickey Mouse, since I have two different Mickey plushies from Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (2016 and 2017). I went with the trick or treat theme, even though I doubt there will be any trick-or-treaters. (Two years ago, we have like three total, last year and this year we’re putting up a sign that basically says “Happy Halloween, sorry no candy here” because of Covid risks). I really enjoyed setting this one up, though the purple light bulb kinda ruins it. (Someone in maintenance is changing the lightbulbs to be this purple color so that it doesn’t bother residents, but it makes me feel less safe when I’m out at night…)

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Mom’s room was actually the first window I did. She asked me to not make it crazy looking, and to keep it from looking like Halloween threw up. So I went with more of a fall theme, something that followed exactly what she said. The two pumpkin bags are actually ceramic, and we’ve had them since I was a small child. The last detail is the baby Groot, which Mom put in her window about a day after I put plushies in mine right after we moved in. He hasn’t moved since (except for dusting, of course.)

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The lights were supposed to be purple, but they’re very pink. But I’m dealing with it. This is my window. I actually changed it a lot from what I had originally planned. I wanted to have a slew of Mickey plushies, all in different costumes, like Halloween outfits. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get them to stay on the windowsill. So instead I added an autumn fox that is designed to say sitting like that. I also didn’t get to add nearly as many window clings as I wanted to, nor anything hanging from the top, mostly because I was too damn late.

But I am happy with how they came out. Not too bad for three hours of work. I’m already planning my Christmas windows, so you’ll see those sometime in December!

Happy early Halloween!

Until next time!