Hello everyone! Autumn and Winter are probably my favourite seasons for several reasons, but the main one is probably because of all the fun festivities! In the last few months I've celebrated Halloween, Day of the Dead and Bonfire Night. Every year I celebrate Halloween and Bonfire Night, however I don't normally celebrate Day of the Dead since it's a festival from Mexico that isn't typically celebrated where I live. I love to explore different country's cultures and Day of the Dead is a Mexican tradition that interests me so that's why I took part in it this year. In this week's post, I wanted to share with you a few pictures that I've taken during my celebrations so you get to know how I like to enjoy the Autumn season!
These first two photos were taken on the run-up to Halloween. Something i love to do in October is to watch Halloween movies. We have a collection of spooky DVDs that I watch every year, they inspired me to draw my Inktober art (that I talked about in
this post). In these two pictures you can see 'The Corpse Bride' and 'Little Shop of Horrors'. I reccommend these films along with: 'Beetlejuice', 'Coraline' and 'Ghostbusters'!
This second photo was taken on the day before Halloween. That day I was busy preparing the living room for the party we were going to have the next day! I bought these paperchains from HobbyCraft which I used sellotape to put together. I think that making your own paperchains is relaxing and adds a homemade charm to your party room! Paper chains are quite common at Christmas but I think they look great at all occasions when they have different patterns on! These have: spiders, skulls, bats and pumpkins on them so they're perfectly spooky! This year we got several new Halloween decorations which was nice to see. Previously we had paper skeletons decorations (which were still great decorations) but now that we have swapped them for a few more decorations, the room looked a little more sophisticated.
Here's the main Halloween decoration we had. It's a Halloween tree which more and more people have been using for their parties. It's like a Christmas tree but black and covered with Halloween baubles, lights and other decorations. I'm not sure how I feel about this, since I am a lover of Christmas so this feels a little strange. It reminds me of the film 'Nightmare Before Christmas' actually, where Halloween takes over Christmas. But I suppose that's a good thing! We used lots of the new decorations such as the tinsel animals, pumpkin ceramic dish, wicker pumpkin, bat cauldrons and more. You can also see a bit of the paper chains in this photo too! What do you think about Halloween trees? An interesting twist on Halloween or just bizarre? It was certainly a talking point at the Halloween party we had.
Now onto Day of the Dead! this photo is kind of a mixture of \Halloween and Day of the Dead because it has our Halloween pumpkin and crackers but has my Day of the Dead cup in it. This cup was from Aldi in case you want it, I'm not sure if they'll sell it since Halloween and Day of the Dead have been and gone. I have quite a few pretty cups in the cupboard-it's practically overflowing! Plenty of mason jars and even a pineapple cup! As you have probably figured out already from previous post, I am a little obsessed with pineapples! xD
This next photo is another one from Day of the Dead! This shows what I got up to on November the 1st and 2nd. These are my two Day of the Dead themed colouring books: one by Thaneeya McArdle and the other is a mask colouring book from Aldi. You may have seen some of my colouring from Thaneeya's book before and you'll see more soon. I know it's been a while since the last 'Colouring Quest; post, but that's because I devoted my time in October to doing Halloween posts and Inktober drawings. I didn't celebrate Day of the Dead in the traditional way of creating altars and giving food to the dead but instead I used it as 2 days to get creative with colour.
Last but not least, here's my photo from Bonfire Night. There's only one for this celebration because it's hard to get a good photo when it's as dark as it was. I thoroughly enjoyed Bonfire Night this year: we watched fireworks, ate yummy food and sat by the fire. In this photo, you can see my toffee apple that I held up in front of the fire. I love this photo because of the contrast of bright, warm colours and pitch black. You can see the toffee coating glistening in the glow of the fire. I also filmed a short video of a firework for my Instagram. All of these photos were from my Instagram but since it's a private page, I thought I would share them with you all in this post. I have loved taking lots of photos recently, they remind me of all the lovely occasions.
That's all the photos I have to share with you from the recent festivities, I hope you've enjoyed them! If you want to see some more of my photos then you should read 'My Winter in Photos' from last year by clicking
here. I might do another similar post later this year too since I'm always inspired to do photography at special occasions such as Christmas.
PS: Sorry that I have missed two weeks of blogging-I just wanted to take a short break after having such a busy October and early November!
PPS: I've changed my background again to be an Autumn themed one. I used my butterfly drawing and then some PicMonkey overlays to build it up. I tried to make it tile like usual, but it didn't seem to work so I left it large.
Over to you...
Did you celebrate any of these occasions, if so what did you do? Also, are you looking forward to Christmas? I know I am, there'll be a few festive posts in the run-up to December 25th!
