It’s been a rough few weeks for being the most wonderful time of year, huh? I’m a thinking person, like thinking is one of my favorite things to do, but after all my thinking I can’t come up with the right way to live in this world. Even when your life isn’t directly affected by natural disasters, shootings, fires, war, famine, racists, death, etc. should you saturate in the news and the communal human loss? Or do you stick your head in the sand and live happily in a bubble because your children deserve better than a melancholic mother? That option can’t be acceptable when other mothers aren’t afforded that luxury. I find it impossible to live in the middle, though that’s probably the healthy place to be, so I continually loop through those two extremes, often overstaying my welcome in melancholy…where you could probably guess from this paragraph that I am deep in right now. Why, humans?

Anyways, this has very little to do with my Halloween decorations. Or everything. Who knows at this point. Life is absurd and hard and ugly and straight up wrong, and when world events flare up (OR TOM PETTY DIES), I cynically look at creative pursuits and celebrations as a cheap cover up for all the wrong. So maybe here’s me doing my best to cover up our shared ugly human existence by making a pretty house. Or pretty weird house, depending on taste. Wow, what an intro. Sorry to ramble so off. Though this almost turned into an entire post about the impact TP has made on my life, so I actually think I’m letting you off easy :)

Let me bring it back in. Despite my doom and gloom feelings, I had a lot of fun decorating our house for Halloween this year. I usually go pretty minimal (last year’s inside and out) but was surprisingly over-enthusiastic this year. Probably because the front yard is semi-presentable for the first time ever and the possibilities are wide open. It’s really great, I’ll share soon, I just need to plant a few more things. Our outside Halloween decorations are still quite minimal, but in a large scale way that is working for our yard and for me.
We have a simple spider web theme going on. I almost passed on these Mega Spider Webs from Target because they looked like a dumpy hammock in the bag that would blow down in the wind, but I decided to give one a try and liked it so much I bought another. Easy, cheap, fun, big impact (they are 25′ long!) but in a minimal way. They fit my requirements for compact storage and have, so far, withstood some major wind.I painted the wonderfully weird screen white and we’re planning on adding a second! I’m basically in love.I’ll share Halloween inside later this week. And keep the feelings to a minimum. For today, sending love and prayers to my beloved, burning California. xoxo