Post-Halloween Thoughts

My grand plans for an ethical and Australian Halloween didn't get as far off the ground as I'd hoped. But shifting my point of view did result in some changes and some fun crafts and foods, so I'm happy with how the holiday turned out.

When I was trying to pick a craft project for the party I focused my search on 'green', 'recycled' or 'ethical' Halloween crafts. This produced some great ideas, but I do have reservations.

Sometimes these craft projects are called "recycled" because they use one recycled item, but they require you to purchase new craft supplies to complete it.What I'm ideally looking for in a Halloween craft is something that uses as little new material as possible and can be appropriately gotten rid of afterwards - composted, recycled, eaten or returned to it's raw state. These pumpkins will be dinner by tomorrow night.

One that I liked the idea of was a Halloween flower centrepiece. Of course it's only 'green' because I already have fake flowers and some old fake bugs. But what I like is that the flowers can go back into my craft supplies, and the bugs can go back in the Halloween box in the shed. Nothing has actually been 'used up' for this decoration. And it was fun to do.

I didn't have that many bugs actually, and the flowers I had available we not so uniform or pale, so I couldn't aim for the same look. But I had lots of little skeleton hands for one thing.

And this worm that is really slimy to the touch. I like the idea that in their lifetime, this plastic crap will at least have seen a lot of Halloweens, and been used in a wide variety of ways.

Now it's time to start looking ahead to Christmas. Awesome.