The kids are alright and the pumpkins are too

My young neighbor rescued my pumpkin’s ear yesterday and attempted to reattach it.

“I knew it would blow away if I didn’t try,” he said.

Imagine taking the time too repair someone’s pumpkin on a blustery day!

The kids are alright (and my pumpkins are too).

We’ve always been a Halloween-loving neighborhood. Carol down the street even gives out adult beverages and full-sized candy bars on Halloween night.

Beyond that, this neighborhood is full of good people.

We live across the street from a park and a middle school, and down the road from a grade school. So, our neighborhood is also frequently full of kids.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been amusing myself, our granddaughter and, hopefully, some of the neighborhood little ones, by switching out my giant pumpkin’s costume. I wrote about how I made that 166-pound gourd into Spiderman.

Since then, every week or so, I’ve turned it into a new character.

One week, he was Dr. Suess. The next, the Cookie Monster. Then came SpongeBob Squarepants. And, now, I turned my giant pumpkin into Bluey and his little sidekick into Bingo.

I’ve put together most of the costumes from things I found around our house — I saw an old yellow pillowcase and knew it would be SpongeBob. That old Dr. Suess hat has lived in our basement costume bin for years.

Most of the felt and markers are left over from old school art projects. I’ve had to pop into the Dollar Store for a few items — mostly plastic table cloths. My main goal with the pumpkin costumes was to make them simple and durable. Wisconsin is beautiful this time of year, but its weather will keep you on your toes. I tried to make my little costumes as waterproof as possible. This weekend, I ran out of felt for poor Blue and Bingo, so I used cardboard for their ears.

Poor Bluey and Bingo had a rough and rainy time of it, their first night on our porch, and their ears were a little mushy come morning. Then, the wind picked up and blew one of Bluey’s ears into the bushes.

I didn’t even notice. But, Carlo, our neighbor, did. He fished it out of the bushes and reattached it as best as he could.

I reinforced all the ears yesterday afternoon and I hope they make it through the week.

Meanwhile, I’m just so tickled to live in a neighborhood where my goofy pumpkins are protected from the elements by the kindness of the people walking past.