Ghosts, Ghouls and Spooky Things

It's All Hallows Eve and the wee little ghosts, goblins and ghouls come out to play. The history of Halloween is quite interesting and nothing like the commercial version you see nowadays. It dates back to the Celtic traditional festival of Samhain. This was a pagan event to celebrate the end of the harvest and prepare for the winter. October 31 was believed to be an overlap of the two worlds of the living and the dead in which the dead for that evening would roam amongst the living. Of course dead people coming back to life love to wreak havoc and such... especially on your crops. To blend in with the spirits, people would dress up like ghosts, ghouls and other spooky things and thus they would not be targeted for mischief and wrong-doings. 

The story of the Jack-o-Lantern is even more confusing. There are many different versions of it, but they all boil down to a crafty man named Jack who outwits the devil. He then releases the devil but only with conditions that his soul will not go to hell when he dies. The devil complies but when Jack dies he finds out that since he wasn't so good he also can't go to heaven. This put him in a bit of a pickle. He was forced to wander the earth. As he could not see where he where he was going the devil gave him an ember from hell that would never extinguish. Jack carved a lantern out of a turnip and put the ember in it and wandered endlessly. He became known as Jack of the lantern. 

All this history of ghosts, ghouls and other unmentionable things of course I decided to join them today with my Carmen Sandiego outfit. This of course is the perfect outfit to outwit those zombies. They wouldn't even know where in the world she was? He he he. 

Truthfully my outfit evolved last week sometime when I found a great Carmen hat at Winners.  With a red coat at home, yellow scarf and some black outfits to wear underneath, I was set. I wore this costume once already on the weekend for a party with friends and then again for work today. For the rest of the people at my office I planned a costume contest as well as a cubicle decorating contest and my co-worker made some Halloween trivia. 

For prizes I made some nice little felt items. The prize for the trivia was a wise little felt owl ornament to decorate an office. Inspired by this idea here. For the costume contest I created a little pumpkin. I used the idea of cutting little circles and folding them like you would for a felt carnation but instead I made it round. To do this I glued them all to a button in the middle. Then I added a little felt roll of a stem and a green leaf. It turned out pretty cute! Lastly, for the cubicle decoration winners I made some cute little felt ghost ornaments like these ones here. Hopefully everyone likes their gifts. 

 

I also made some cards to give to friends and family on this day. I was very pleased with how they turned out since this is my first batch of cards ever. (A friend of mine just recently taught me how to do it and now I am addicted.)

 

The evening will probably entail handing out candy at a friends house, drinking wine and watching Halloween movies on the TV. Ahh... such a great day!  

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

There she is!

Felt Ghosts for a Prize 

Felt Owl for a Prize

Felt Pumpkin Prize