Tons of pumpkins and some creepy creatures

Last Friday night was the highlight of the Halloween season so far! My mom and I saw probably the most jack-o-lanterns we've ever seen together in one place. The jack-o-lanterns were in a public park along with all kinds of homemade creatures and displays. It was all extremely cool and made me feel like a kid who was just in awe of everything. I felt like I kept saying, "Look over there!" all night.

This picture was taken far away from the line of pumpkins. Neither end of the line made it into the frame and this line of pumpkins was several rows deep. It might be kind of hard to tell that because of the crowd. As you can see, there were a lot of pumpkins! I think there were over 1,000.

Here are a few of my favorite carvings, starting with a graveyard:

Does anyone recognize this flaming face next to Spider Man? There is something so familiar about this design.

Grr... That's a feisty little pumpkin. I like that ghost too.

This snake is one of my top favorites. Look, they even carved the motion of the rattler!

A skeleton fish and sugar skull:

Do you remember that old Simpsons Halloween Special where Bart plays the part of the raven, while Poe's "The Raven" is read by James Earl Jones? Well, here's the Bart Raven in a carving! I was so excited to see this one.

You have to love this!

I like what is happening with the top of this devil/mask pumpkin. I don't know if the top was set like that purposely but it gives this cool hair-like effect. And how neat is that cabin with trees? I like how they scraped a layer of pumpkin off to make the little cabin.

A bat on a skull?

I know about the Evil Dead movies enough to understand this, although I haven't seen any of them. Still, I can appreciate a good carving! That chainsaw had to be tricky to cut.

This is like a beautiful Henna design!

There was a band playing and their stage was lit up in blue lights. Those lights made a really cool, electric contrast to all the orange pumpkins. That blue and orange combination created some of my favorite pumpkin pics of the night. (And yes, I'm realizing that I'm saying that about pretty much all of the pumpkins.)

A frog-owl?

It was like the pumpkin patch came alive and a bunch of creepy critters sprang out of it. Like these pumpkin zombies:

And this weirdly human-like pumpkin couple:

Yikes! Doesn't he look real? I thought that without the flash, these looked like real people in costumes.

And their incredibly creepy pumpkin baby! Look at its leaf-like hands. I knew I was in for something before looking in the baby carriage, because I could see the reactions of those who were looking in there!

We could see pumpkin experiments happening through the window of a building.

Through another window there were pumpkins and this floating ghoulish head that looked like they were painted with blacklight paint.

Slimy zombies were stumbling toward us!

Someone did a great job with this one.

I was tempted to lighten some of these photos, but I didn't. I wanted to show just how spooky these things looked in the dark.

There was a hearse with a driver that looked like he climbed out of the back.

There were a number of those cut-out face creations around.

I'm onto him!

After walking around for some time, we went inside a community type building. Outside of that building was this awesome reaper display.

You have to love this one:

Looking up on the way in, I saw a... something. The feet crack me up!

This tall pumpkin creature was by the entrance. He barely fit in the space.

There were of course more cool decorations inside. A kid was setting off the music that went with these props and doing some kind of jig while I was taking this pic.

I imagine this would make a good photo op for a group of people if they wanted to peek through the eyes and mouth.

These are possibly vintage and genuinely creepy.

We were surprised to find out there was a magic act happening inside. It was a pretty good act by one of the more friendly magicians I've seen.

So, it was a super great night. I can't remember the last time I was surprised and creeped out by Halloween decorations. A lot of the displays I'm used to seeing seem store bought or like something I've seen before. These homemade ones were much more atmospheric than I'm used to! It didn't hurt that there was a bright moon in the sky and the trees were glowing orange from all the lights. The whole thing felt classic, welcoming, and old-timey.

Not surprisingly, there was a big crowd out wandering around and taking pictures. So I'm happy to say this event was appreciated!

Happy Halloween Goodies at Stein's

I've been looking forward to sharing my annual photos of Stein's! I took these pics a couple days ago when it was bright and sunny out. It was also pretty darn cold. A brisk, chilly wind was whipping my hair around in the same way it was whipping this scarecrow's hair around.

Steins had a lot of cute scarecrows out.

They also had a massive selection of these clay jack-o-lanterns.

As you can see, some of them were pretty large! I think they would all look great outdoors, lit with a big candle.

I was calling these the peanut head pumpkins.

And I thought these looked like they had little hats on them. Sort of stem hats.

I was amused by these because it looks like the bottom pumpkin is kind of miffed holding the others up.

I guess you burn a fire in the lower part of this one?

This is probably my favorite:

And one little clay ghost:

Stein's had a pretty good array of gourds. I think I've seen more different gourds in stores this year than usual.

I was so excited to see this one, because I had seen it on a gourd identification web site recently. When I saw it on the web site, I thought it was so cool and unusual. So it was neat to see this in person. This is fittingly named "Peanut Pumpkin".

Seriously, doesn't this pumpkin look like it has a bunch of peanuts glued to it?

These gourds always remind me of swans. I think I'd have to paint an eye on one of these if I bought one.

Just after typing that, I looked at this next picture and saw that this one naturally comes with an eye!

This one was listed as the "Full Moon Pumpkin". How perfect is that?

A very warty gourd:

Stein's had lots of regular pumpkins too. I don't have much to say about those, but here they are. 😆

How cute is this? I had to take my annual photo of one of these planters. I ought to paint a jack-o-lantern face on a planter, since I like this so much. It makes whatever plant is in it look like funky hair.

I love these mini pumpkins with faces. I'm guessing the faces are temporary tattoos? This is my first time seeing some with party hats.

Kitty cat pumpkins with feathery hairdos:

Most of the flowers for sale now are mums. I like the way the light and shadows came out in this pic. It looks like I messed with this because the colors are so vibrant, but I didn't.

I love those little ornamental peppers! These always seem to appear in fall, in with decorative cabbage.

These are like miniature carrots.

I'm not sure if I've seen a purple splotchy one like this before.

Believe it or not, these are ornamental peppers too! They're called "Black Pearl" which I think is a very fitting name. They're so reflective that I can see myself in them. I'm that little vertical line in the middle of each. 😁

So, onto the indoor Halloween decorations. Sometimes I like how the photos of a store display look more than what I saw with my eyes. With some cropping, I can focus in on what I liked best on a shelf. In this case, I'm not sure why these pumpkins look better in photo form. At the store I was thinking "Why are they silver?" and now I'm thinking "These look like some cool brushed metal, industrial pumpkins!"

I think those pumpkins would look neat with a robot display, assuming people make Halloween robot displays. I also think these decorations would look neat with the silver pumpkins:

I was playing around with the items on the shelf, assembling what I thought might look good together. Don't you think this sign, bat, and one of those silver pumpkins would look neat together?

This next sign made me laugh out loud. It's a take off that "Enter as strangers, leave as friends" sort of message, except it says "Enter as strangers, leave if you can". Even now, I'm smiling at that.

Glitter crow!

How cute is this truck, complete with a pumpkin on its door? If you've read my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I love any small, vintage looking truck with anything holiday-themed in the back of it. Pumpkins are of course a favorite truck passenger of mine.

I loved these next two pumpkins! I've never seen pumpkins emitting... dry ice? Fog from a fog machine? Not in person anyway. This is the kind of thing I've seen in a movie, maybe a movie with a super cool Halloween party involved.

The lights inside these pumpkins changed colors.

I found this cat genuinely creepy. I don't know why, really. Maybe because it looks like it's up to no good? Or because it looks like something out of a Pharaoh's tomb if it lost the pumpkin?

How fun are these? Fishnet socks for those who don't want to bother with the fishnet stockings! And how many socks feature a buckle? That actually makes no sense, but I guess the buckle implies a witch's boot?

I like this vintage-inspired cat that was on a jar lid. I think I would like it even better with a body. Or it could look cool as a much larger cat head just sitting on a shelf.

I love this little vintage looking owl too! Like the cat above, I would have liked it even better if it wasn't attached to anything. That's probably why I took a photo of just the owl and not the bowl it was attached to.

I always have to take a pic of a skeleton pirate. This one has a massive earring!

And lastly, here's one of the most tempting things I saw at Stein's. This is one of a series of skeletons on a string of lights. It reminds me of some little party favor at a kid's Halloween party. There's something nostalgic about it.

So there's this year's trip to Stein's! They had some pretty good stuff. As far as I know, Stein's is just a Wisconsin store. So probably most of the people reading this haven't been to one. If anyone outside of Wisconsin has a similar store, I'd be interested in hearing about it!