Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 I have never really been one to celebrate New Year’s. In fact, up until last year, I always found the idea of a whole blank slate stretched out in front of me to be somewhat ominous. Facing the unknown can either be exciting or scary, and I think, on some level, 2020 turned out to be a combination of the two. It was definitely not a typical year, and many of the long-term goals I had for myself didn’t pan out due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, but it did have its high points as well as lows. It’s hard for me to believe this blog will be a year old tomorrow. I came up with the idea to start blogging at some point in late 2019, but got frustrated every time I attempted it. I also already had a failed Halloween blog under my belt from around 2015-ish, which ultimately became nothing but a boring collection of hauls, and led to me buying things I didn’t really want, just for the sake of having something to talk about. But, while I may not have the legions of followers that some

Do you remember those characters that were so common in children’s media in the 80s and 90s? Those women who lived alone, or maybe with cats? Perhaps they had some sort of physical ailment or deformity that made them stand out in a not-so-great way? The ones all the neighborhood kids feared and wouldn’t so much as pass by her house alone? The one they called ‘Witch’?  I should’ve known I was destined for a spooky existence when I saw those types of characters and immediately thought, as it would be put today, “GOALS!” In fact, my mother once told me, during some fight we were having, most likely around the time leading into my puberty, that I was so mean, that would likely be my future. Old and alone, and feared by everyone in the neighborhood. When I defiantly responded by yelling “GOOD!”, I don’t think my mother realized that I meant it. I wasn’t just trying to be a brat; I honestly found that kind of life intriguing. I’m not quite sure why, if it was solely the thought of being rega

 It’s Christmas Eve today on the Gregorian calendar, so what better time to address something I often contemplate but never really talk about much: My love/hate relationship with the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was six when the movie first came out, and was extremely intrigued as, of course, my interest in Halloween was taking shape and this was a movie featuring characters that looked like walking decorations. The looks of some of the characters scared me a little at first (I have a vivid memory of checking behind the shower curtain for a lurking Jack Skellington every time I went to the bathroom for a couple of years.) but I did enjoy the movie, and was most in love with the characters of Sally and Zero. Nonetheless, as a young child, I always felt there was something about the story that I just didn’t quite “get”, so the movie was never a go-to when I was a kid the way Hocus Pocus was. In fact, I don’t think I gave much thought to The Nightmare Before Christmas until my

 I know that most of my posts here have been on the melancholy side lately. The first two months after Halloween are always the most difficult for me, as post-Halloween depression combines with basically being force-fed Christmas and then treated like there’s something wrong with me when I regurgitate it. (My attitude toward Christmas is at its absolute worst this year...I think the pandemic stress on top of it is just too much.) So, I decided I wanted to do a more upbeat post, and thought, what better way to get my mind on something else, than to do a movie review? And, because I was wanting to do something more upbeat, why not choose a movie that’s meant to be fun? So, today, we’re going to be talking about a movie I don’t see mentioned around the Halloween community much (or really at all):  Fun Size. I didn’t pay much attention to this movie when it was first released. It came out in 2012, when Victoria Justice was at the height of her popularity thanks to Nickelodeon, and when I f

 As the Gregorian month of November has officially come to a close, the final remnants of spooky season, to the layman, will surely be disappearing with it.  I have long thought about the pumpkins that hang around on porches after Halloween’s end. How they stand out in a world that seems to have forgotten Halloween ever was, and wonder what their story is. Have they just been forgotten by those whose homes they inhabit, or is it intentional? Is there someone dwelling in these places that’s at least a little bit like me, and wants to leave some representation of their favorite time of year lying around until it rots away in its own time? And, perhaps this is a silly question, but do the pumpkins know somehow that their moment has ended? As I said, these are things I have often thought about, but I recently was inspired to do even more thinking on the subject. An artist on Instagram,  Everett’s Attic , recently designed these two Christmas pumpkins, named Rotting and Plotting, and tagged

 I promise I’ll post something less melancholy one of these days, but post-Halloween depression and the end of the autumn season bring about the more solemn memories of spooky seasons gone by. I’m not sure when I first really started recognizing my post-Halloween depression and acknowledging how it affected me. I think it was somewhere in my pre-teen years, probably around middle school age. However, there was always some part of me fighting to keep Halloween alive in the off-season. I truly have no idea why I never kept decorations up year round in my bedroom when I was younger. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I even considered this an option. I don’t think anyone would’ve taken issue with me keeping some plastic pumpkins on display in my own space all year round, especially considering that at some point, as a toddler, I’d gotten so strangely attached to an Easter lamb window cling, that my mother allowed me to keep it in my bedroom window until it dried out too much to stay t

 I have never been a fan of Thanksgiving. As a child, I thought of it as “that boring holiday between Halloween and Christmas”, and found it insulting somehow that such a boring holiday would dare to follow Halloween.  The false history related to the holiday has made me dislike it even more as I’ve gotten older, along with the more trivial, but beyond exhausting, issues that come with being a retail worker this time of year. I can’t find a single thing to like about the holiday itself, and yet I realize there’s a part of me that clings to it. Thanksgiving is autumn’s underwhelming, not-so-grand finale. I think of it a lot like the firework show I went to when I was twelve. Somehow, someone screwed up and the finale came at the beginning. The entire show was backwards. Rapid flashes of color lit up the sky, exciting everyone for what was to come, but instead of the pace picking up even more, things slowed down, until the show came to an end with one meek little white flash. The excitem

 I feel a strange energy in the air today.  I had planned to take a lot of pictures, even hauled six real pumpkins outside with me, and of course, it started to rain. Not too heavily, but enough to make me wary of having handmade dolls outside for an extended period of time. I finished up what I could, but I found myself still longing to be outside.  That’s a strange occurrence for me, in November. I do try, sometimes desperately, to hold onto the fact that November is still autumn, but it’s not always easy, especially in a day and age where Christmas takes over on November first, and autumnal decor for Thanksgiving doesn’t seem to exist anymore. (Does anyone remember when grocery stores would stock pumpkins until Black Friday?) Today, however, has been a different kind of day. It’s hard to explain, but after pulling a chair under one of the umbrellas on the patio, I looked around and just felt the strangest feelings and energies. The sky is gray, and there’s a melancholy feeling in th

 Last night, I had a very vivid vision. I’m honestly not sure if it was a dream or a memory.  I just know that for a short, sweet moment in time, I was transported back to my childhood Halloweens.  I wanted to attempt to share the memory through writing. You pour the candy you received on your small tour through the neighborhood with your mother, into the bag your costume came in. You think about leaving it in your smaller pail, but there’s no telling where the night may go. You don’t want to have to quit early because you ran out of room!  Your aunt is taking you out tonight, and, at this moment in time, she’s the only person in the world that you can possibly imagine loving Halloween as much as you do. She got you into this holiday, coaxing you out from under a table when you were four years old, dressed as a pumpkin but scared to trick or treat. From then on, Halloween was always somewhere in your thoughts. You bundled up in winter, wishing you were putting on a costume instead. You

 One thing I’m pretty proud of when it comes to this blog, is that it hasn’t just become a collection of hauls. I tried Halloween blogging several years ago (on LiveJournal...) and never felt like I had much to talk about if I wasn’t showing off something I’d recently bought. It actually got to the point where I think I may have been buying things just for the sake of having something to talk about on that blog. That was something I promised myself wasn’t going to happen again, once I had the idea to make a new blog. However, sometimes there are things that you get that you just have to talk about! When I was working on my post about  my childhood belief in the Great Pumpkin , I ran across a decoration I’d never seen before, the  Telco Motionettes Pumpkin Ghost ! This guy literally was the epitome of my childhood vision of the Great Pumpkin, and he instantly became a grail item for me! I took one look at him and suddenly I was the child who couldn’t sleep the night before Halloween aga

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Some are happy about it, but others aren’t.  Such is life, with everything. There will always be people with opposing views, on just about any subject. But Christmas in the Halloween community tends to be a controversial one.  Are you a “poser” for enjoying and posting about Christmas, when you claim your favorite holiday is Halloween? Or are you a grinch for not caring to get into the spirit of a different holiday? The answer is, of course, no, to both. Everyone has the right to do, or not do, what makes them happy as an individual. There’s no ironclad rule that you can’t enjoy more than one holiday, and there’s no ironclad rule that you have to force yourself into the spirit of a holiday that doesn’t mean all that much to you.  But I’ve seen a fair amount of hate regarding this issue, on both sides, so I figured I’d talk about where I stand, and what I think. I am, personally, not a huge fan of Christmas. I wouldn’t say I hate it, it’s jus

 Hard to believe, it’s already been a week since Halloween Eve. I truly don’t know where the time goes. Only one short week ago, we were anticipating the magic of Halloween night, and now, we’re staring down another 359 days on the countdown.  But, I figured today might be a good day to recap my trip to Sleepy Hollow for Halloween 2020. We left on Thursday, the 29th. It was the perfect weather for a little spooky road trip. I’ve come to appreciate gloomy, rainy days as Halloween approaches. I don’t want to see it so rainy or stormy that Halloween night events get cancelled, but that ominous feeling a few days leading up to the holiday definitely helps get you into the mood. We had no events planned for Thursday night, and thankfully so, as they likely would’ve been cancelled, but it was still just an amazing feeling to be in such an amazing place on a day that felt so spooky. There is a grocery store right by the hotel that always has vintage style decorations for sale, and of course,