If you know me at all you know I’m a spooky bitch. I mean I got married on Halloween for Christ sake. Every year I hibernate for 3 months while people have their summer fun. But, come September 1st, oh hunny, it’s a glorious morning and it absolutely does not make me sick (iykyk). We go by meteorological seasons in the Potter household and that means September, October, and November are Fall. I live for a crisp 65 degree day, colorful leaves, the smell of apples filling my house. Hocus Pocus is a must as we decorate for the start of the best 3 months of the year, and the best part is that this year I have a new friend to experience it all with. We did some fun fall things around Philadelphia and I narrowed it down to our favorites. I hope you enjoy and try some out for yourself.
Decorate:
On September 1st we woke up, went into the attic and brought down all the boxes labeled Fall/Halloween. We had some breakfast, summoned the spirits, and discussed the origin of Halloween which I will add at the end of this post because history is important! After a breakfast of sweet potatoes, because we needed something orange, we sat on the couch and turned on one of the best Halloween movies of all time, Hocus Pocus. While Griffin watched, I decorated our house so that we could begin our favorite season. Griffin got to put out the last pumpkin in our spooky village – A tradition I hope we keep going for years to come!
Spooky book shopping:
Once you decorate the house, you need to keep the theme going. And what’s better for Halloween than a spooky story. Which meant a trip to the bookstore. By the time we were done we had almost every Halloween book in the kids section and I don’t regret it one bit. We read through all of them and decided to share some of our favorites with you! Our top picks were Gustavo The Shy Ghost, Snowmen At Halloween, How I Met My Monster & Hocus Pocus!
Pumpkin Patch (Linvilla Orchards):
Nothing says Fall like a plump, orange pumpkin. We went to a pumpkin patch and had the best time looking at all the pumpkins and fall/Halloween decor they had. Griffin loved looking around and he even got his own baby sized pumpkin. While it was fun to walk around with a baby, there were a lot of other things there for toddlers and young kids between a playground, corn mazes, hayrides, apple picking, train rides, face painting, and all the sweet treats you can imagine. Linvilla is the perfect place to go during spooky season but I do recommend going during the week if you can because weekends are less than pleasant with tons of people bumping into each other.
Longwood Gardens:
The best spot to walk around any day of the year but especially during the holiday season. The first holiday being Halloween. As you walk in there is a huge pumpkin display which is the perfect spot for a picture. They also have a pumpkin playground for older kids to explore pumpkins, gourds, and corn husk towers. There is a restaurant on the property so you can take a break from exploring to fuel up. This is also the perfect spot for holiday card photos, which is right around the corner.
Boo At The Zoo:
Our favorite thing to do this Halloween season was hands down the zoo. They have Boo at the Zoo on the weekends in October and everyone is supposed to dress up. They have candy bags for sale when you walk in or you can bring your own. Throughout the zoo are tents where kids can go trick-or-treating. Because what kid doesn’t want to see their favorite animals and get their favorite candy at the same time!
Overall there are so many things to do and we just scratched the surface. We can’t wait to do all of this and more next October and we hope you also try some of our suggestions, we promise you won’t regret it!
ORIGIN OF HALLOWEEN:
I could go super in depth with this but it’s a mom blog so I’ll just scratch the surface here since it is Halloween and you should all know what you’re really celebrating. October 31st is known as Samhain, one of two ‘spirit nights’. Samhain is a Celtic festival which translates to “end of summer”. It is a time to celebrate the death of summer and birth of winter. It is said that at this time the barrier between the physical realm and the spirit realm is broken down to its thinnest form. This means on that day you could communicate with your departed loved ones. However, while the barrier was open, monsters could come through as well. This is where costumes came from because people would dress up so as to scare the monster’s, fairies in particular. This way they wouldn’t be kidnapped. In the 7th century the Catholic church declared November 1st as All Saints Day and in 1000A.D the church made November 2nd All Souls Day. It is widely believed that the church was trying to replace Samhain with its own church sanctioned holiday. All Saints Day was considered All-Hallows and Samhain was called All Hallows Eve. Eventually all three merged to create what we know today as Halloween.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN MAMAS!
xoxo,nikki
ForTheMoms 