Halloween Eve

We went out to dinner tonight, to Babbo Bruno's..... our friend and favorite waitress K wasn't there tonight, so dinner wasn't quite the celebration that it is when she's there to make everything extra-special. Food was great, though...... I've been ordering the fresh shrimp and crab salad now for the past few months-- boiled shrimp and lump crab meat on top of fresh greens, sprinkled with chopped tomatoes and avacado. Delicious salad.... and tonight I ordered a cup of Stefano's homemade tomato soup. Over 80 degrees, and I was eating hot soup. (As if I hadn't had enough soup all those weeks I was sick.)

I was at the local bookstore today, looking for Thanksgiving books. Last year, I found wonderful Thanksgiving cookbooks and bought those to give as favors for our friends who came here for Thanksgiving dinner. I also bought one for myself, to give me some new ideas so we don't have the same vegetables every Thanksgiving. This morning, I found books by Susan Branch, called "Autumn." They had three copies, so I bought all of them... nice little books filled with pretty drawings and great recipes and crafts for the Thanksgiving season. Although, the way the stores are stocking up their Christmas items already, they're sort of skating through Thanksgiving in a heartbeat. But I guess I can't complain about that, because I do the same thing. I'll be decorating for Christmas next week, and just having a Thanksgiving theme in the dining room. The rest of the house will soon be all Christmas-ed up. I do that for the simple reason that we have a lot of holiday decorations, and it takes time to get them all around the house. Every year, as I go through the boxes, I end up putting some not-so-sentimental things into the donations box.

We're still talking about Thanksgiving.... C and her parents will be here, and that will make it fun and easy, with just the five of us. So now we're talking and deciding who else to invite, or not to invite. I had enough invitations left over from last Thanksgiving, so I didn't buy new ones this year. I did, however, use a glitter pen to fancy-up the invitations....... the bouquet of flowers on the invitation cards has been embellished with gold glitter. Just a little extra sparkle to make the same invitations look a little different. And we must have invitations..... and placecards-- young Miss C saves them all, and I know she loves all the fuss.

I've been saving the invitations and placecards as well..... I have a "party book" where I keep a log of all the dinners and parties we've had in this house. I save one invitation from each party, and I also save the placecards for my husband and myself..... this way I don't do the same thing twice. Got to keep it a little different, to keep it interesting and fun.

Tomorrow is Halloween..... the kids will be coming by around 6:30 or so. The Trick-or-Treating hours here are between 6:30 and 8:30.... then the Halloween curfew is enforced and the town wants all kids in their homes by 9:00. When I think back to Halloweens when I was a kid, my sister and I would start Trick-or-Treating right after school (or after lunch if it fell on a weekend) and just keep going and going till we got tired. When our shopping bags got filled up, we'd just go home and empty them out and start all over again. Our neighborhood in NY had a lot of apartment buildings, as well as private homes, so kids really got lots of candy every Halloween. We didn't have to worry about going out after dark, and we didn't worry about going out alone.... Halloween was just fun and worry-free.

Not these days, I would imagine. For as long as I've lived here, I've never seen groups of kids on Halloween night without at least one parent with them.... and we live in a safe community. Special rules apply here on Halloween night.... kids aren't allowed to be out walking the streets without someone over 18 with them, and they can't Trick-or-Treat before 6:30 or after 8:30.... no exceptions, no matter what day of the week Halloween happens to fall.

Times have changed... the world has changed.