I would say Halloween is easily one of the Hubby and my top three favorite holidays. (We differ on our other top two choices. My other top two are the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving - with Cinco de Mayo running close in the race. Hubby likes Christmas for some reason and Arbor Day. Total freak - but I love him.) We carved up some fantastic pumpkins a couple of Halloweens ago during a pumpkin carving contest that Hubby and I had in the back yard that turned into a pumpkin guts throwing contest which I TOTALLY won. But, unfortunately I can't find the photos. The above image is from Free Digital Photos. Not a bad site if half of your own photos are probably mildewing away in a storage facility somewhere in DC. Along with my collection of Victoria magazines (which I will get to in a minute - yeah! My favorite magazine is back!)
Here in Spain Halloween is making a few tentative steps toward becoming a full blown holiday - but it's got a long way to go. They do have a holiday on November 1st - but it's essentially a day to honor saints and martyrs - so it's kind of the opposite of Halloween. We actually arrived in Madrid on November 1st, and - as we were traveling on a red eye flight on the 31st - you can imagine Halloween was kind of a bust last year as well. PLUS we arrived in Spain on a national holiday, the cat had to stay in Spanish customs lock up for an extra day until the vet and customs agents could clear her. None of us enjoyed All Saints Day - I can assure you. We definitely miss all the trappings of Halloween quite a bit. I'm trying to capture the spirit by baking a little pumpkin walnut bread and tapping into my candy corn stash - but it's not the same.
What has cheered my up a bit is the arrival of my first copy of the new Victoria magazine. I loved this mag and squirreled away back copies when Hearst announced they would stop publishing. Of course - all those back issues will probably give me some kind of mildew spore related pneumonia after having been in storage so long - so - thank goodness they've brought it back. And just in time for the holidays. Not Halloween unfortunately, but there is plenty of Thanksgiving/Christmas stuff to enjoy! Luckily - it looks like Thanksgiving is shaping up to be pretty great so I'm focusing on that holiday. Maybe I'll even swap Halloween as a top favorite holiday with a Spanish fiesta. I kind of like the Tomato festival where everyone throws tomatoes at each other or perhaps the Tapas fair in Seville as I like any holiday that centers around food. New country, new fiestas.
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