Our Samhain & Halloween [Bucket List Update]

 

It may be almost a month since the most wonderful time of the year passed, however, I still want to round up our Halloween month and check in on my bucket list for the month to see how we did. 
Originally, this post was scheduled for last Wednesday but I had other stuff going on so decided to miss a week. It's never a bad thing to string out Halloween for as long as possible though haha.
So here is the run down...

Ticking off the Bucket List:

Carve Pumpkins ✔️

Make Vegan Halloween Treats

Camp Inside ✔️

Visit Whitby

Do DIYs ✔️

Watch the 31 Movies ✔️

Try Candy Corn ✔️

Decorate ✔️

Read my Oct TBR ✔️

Sabrina Halloween Marathon ✔️

Do Tattoos

Have a Woodland Walk ✔️

Samhain Rituals ✔️

To check off 10 out of 13 things from my 'bucket list' is rather satisfying, especially considering I feel like I do nothing at all these days! 
I'll include a video above of our Jack 'O Lanterns for this year, we did set up the tent and have a camping-in-the-living room night earlier in the month when Mr H was off work, DIY wise I made some clay ghosts, painted a ceramic pumpkin and cleaned/arranged a bird skull we'd found months prior.
We may not have watched the exact 31 movies I listed in the previous post but we did watch 28 movies and 6 TV shows (including a Sabrina Halloween episode marathon!) which I will accept to tick two off! I got to finally try candy corn and I enjoyed it, I decorated, read 4 books and we had an awesome walk to Duddo Stone Circle as well as a rare trip to the beach with Baker - see his photos here.
Finally, we had a wonderful Samhain where we laid the table and had a filling, seasonal, comfort food dinner including a pumpkin soup Mr H made from the inners of our carved pumpkins! 

What We Watched:
Edward Scissorhands
R.L. Stine's Monsterville: Cabinet of Souls
Hocus Pocus
9
The Reaping
Twitches
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters 2016
Twitches Too
The Others
The Witches
The Witches 2020
The Woman in Black
Behind the Attraction: Haunted Mansion
Toy Story of Terror
The Haunting
Disney's Lonesome Ghosts
Disney's Trick or Treat
Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire
The Haunted Mansion
The Ghosts of Buxley Hall
The Addams Family
Blackbeard's Ghost
Crimson Peak
The Watcher in the Woods
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Casper
Coco
--
Sabrina the Teenage Witch Halloween Episodes x7
The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror  Episodes x7
Most Haunted Misc Episodes x 4
Goosebumps S1
The Worst Witch S1
Broadmoor: A History of the Criminally Insane


What I Read:
Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
The House in the Woods by Yvette Fielding
The Company of Ghosts by Berlie Doherty
Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age

To see a closer look at our actual day on Halloween aka our wedding anniversary, you can check out this post Photo An Hour - A Day in My Life [October 2021]. It was one of my best ever Halloweens and I look forward very much for next years celebration!

Until next time...

Down By The River

We have a car. That means each year it has to go for an MOT and we are without it for the day. Our garage is a mile walk from our house and half a mile from the river front, so before heading home we like to take an hour detour and have a wander by the water. Here are the photos we took on our walk back at the end of October.

I'm going to leave it at just the photos for today.

Until next time...

Photo An Hour - A Day in My Life [October 2021]

 

My last Photo An Hour post was back in May when I decided to bring the super old school 'Day in My Life' style posts back. You can see it here, Photo An Hour - A Day in My Life [April 2021].
The difference here is that in May I showed a typical day in my life, whereas today I am sharing our Halloween which is also our Wedding Anniversary! It was a pretty packed day so come and see what we got up to...

To premise this, I'll say that these obviously aren't taken on the hour every hour. For example, a movie is longer than an hour, some tasks I can't take a photo during - like driving etc. So the timings aren't set in stone per se!

9am
After not the best night of sleep and having been awake pretty much since 5.30, I got up at 8.30 (super lay in for us, we usually get up at 6am, no later than 7.30 on days off) and came downstairs.
So around 9, we had vegan bacon sandwiches and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas!

10am
Baker time! Despite having turned 9 years old in August, this guy thinks he is still a puppy and constantly wants to play. We play piggy in the middle with his toys which he loves and he also likes to hit balloons around too. Being a Border Collie cross he would literally not stop until he dropped so he likes to keep us playing a lot!

11am
The rain finally gave way and I was able to go and top up all the bird feeders. Usually, this is one of the first things I do in the morning, however, when it's raining the seed in the trays gets soaked and ruined.

12am
Another movie on the TV - Casper - and we cracked out Jumanji for a few games too.

1pm
I had my first proper session at Cats Protection as a de-sensitization volunteer today!
I was only there for a shorter time than I will be usually, but it was wonderful to spend time with these two older guys and get lots of love from them.

2pm
I got home about 2.30 and Mr H had been super busy prepping our Samhain dinner!

3pm
This year Halloween fell on a Sunday and this year every Sunday we have had a bath with a bath bomb, so 3pm was bath time with a Ghostie bomb from Lush. It was actually a little underwhelming in comparison to its photos online. We've been using a lot of small business Tales of Toria's bath bombs lately which I think I prefer.

4pm
Chill time with the girls. Baker goes for a nap in his bedroom midday, which means we get to enjoy some quality time with Aurora and Eos. Now that we have the heating on twice a day Aurora can usually be found in a radiator bed or squeezed on top of the radiator, but Eos still comes and gives me plenty of hugs!

5pm
Making cocktails!! We totally forgot about the special black sugar we'd gotten to dust the rims of the glass with and we didn't bother getting the glow-cubes I wanted (we will next year!) but the blood-red and zombie green drinks still turned out pretty cool looking and most importantly, very yummy!

6pm
A little before 6 we sat down for our Samhain feast. The window was open and the table set not only for us but for any ancestors who wanted to join us. 
Our menu was as follows: 
To start, homemade pumpkin soup, garnished with roasted pumpkin seeds both from the pumpkins we carved and warmed flatbreads with homemade garlic butter.
The main comprised of mashed potato, carrot and swede mash, Brussels sprouts, green beans, homemade roast potatoes, roasted broccoli and veggie gravy.
We were so full we couldn't fit in any of our vegan sweeties and treats!

7pm
Well technically this was definitely before 7pm but I did talk about the timings at the start of this.
After dinner, we rushed to clear the table and get through to the living room ready for a virtual guided tour I'd booked us on. I was excited to see it start at Notre Dame and we fully enjoyed the Myths and Legends tour of Paris.

8pm
Ending the day with Coco. Such a fantastic movie from the insanely amazing animation to the very important, heartwarming plot. 

9pm
Bedtime! And here is my huggy girl getting cosy while we read our books before going to sleep.
This is a constant, every night routine for us. We always read in bed and Eos is usually laying on my chest with Aurora underneath my knees under the covers. 

That was our Halloween/Samhain/Wedding Anniversary!! It was a brilliant day. I hope you had a great Halloween too.

Until next time...