Fall-Fest and 3 Lessons Learned

This year our church held a Fall-Fest celebration on 31st October as an alternative to the tradtional Halloween Celebrations, so instead of dressing up and having too much sugar Trick or Treating, we went to a party where…..the kids dressed up and had too much sugar!

Posting my lessons up in 3 parts

Lesson 1

Despite only arriving home on the afternoon of 31 October after a week at the cottage, it is possible to simply decorate the house.

A. Open up the GENUINE AMERICAN CANDY delivered personally by a lovely blogger during her irish trip, and discover it tastes very different to how you imagined! However the kids loved sharing it with their friends, telling them all it was REAL!

B. Arrange artistically with a fake spider or two

C. Wrap some tangled leftover garlands from last year around the base of the table lamp – Voila!

Lesson 2 – Remember your “please and thankyou”s for they are the magic words

We did do a wee bit of Trick or Treating first just in our own street prior to going to Fall-Fest, but on a much smaller scale than usual.

Here are my kids attempting to look scary – but believe they can be quite scary without the aid of costumes.

My daughters no longer want to “dress-up properly” but it was a good excuse to wear lots of black!

As it is so dark here by 6pm after the clocks changed back last weekend, any photos I attempted to take were a disaster – so none of those to share, sorry.

At one door the kids were offered apples – my polite son said “No thanks, I don’t want an apple, can I have a lollipop please?” At least he remembered his pleases and thanksyous!

3. Fall – Fest was a huge success!

So down at church a huge amount of effort and hard work had gone into the planning, promotion, decorating and staffing the event.

As I don’t really want to put photos of other kids on my blog, here are a few of the wee details that made the night such a success :

We were greated by “snow” on the way in – for those of you from colder parts, even this much (artificial) snow is a cause for excitement!

Lots of pumpkins

The table centres in the free cafe

Scarecrows

Some of the many (all free) activities included – fancy dress competition, bouncy castle, badge making, basket ball hoop, table football, mini-golf, family portraits, beading, craft, bun decorating, nail painting, hair braiding, balloon modelling, “fairground” games, puppet show, free popcorn and free party bag…….

Thanks to the lovely Katie Hadfield (a digital designer) I was able to use some of her details to create a digital frame to be printed with the free family portraits.  As many kids and some adults were dressed up there proved to be some interesting “family” poses – including pirates, fairies, aliens and the like!

The evening ended with everyone going to watch the firework show by the council in the local park.  Despite very heavy rain earlier in the day, the evening was dry and clear. There was even a full moon!

Lots of families from the local community joined the church families, and nearly every room in our church was filled. 

So the lesson learned from Fall Fest?

Our church is full of some very talented people who willingly gave of their time and gifts to create a memorable even for all who attended.

So what have you learned this week?

And have you ever attended a non-Halloween event such as our Fall Fest?

You know I love to know!

For more lessons visit Musings of a Housewife

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