By: Alexis Dalton
When there’s a slight cool breeze and Starbucks starts selling their Pumpkin Spice Latte, you know that fall is around the corner. With daily highs in the 80s, it’s easy to forget that fall technically started on September 21. Add in school, work, a pandemic, and it’s difficult to get into the fall spirit.
But here are five activities you can do to get excited about this season (and help convince yourself it’s actually here):
1. Go to a pumpkin patch
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of fall is pumpkin patches. When I was younger, there was a small pumpkin patch in a parking lot near my school during October and November. After school, I would run past whoever was picking me up from school and sprint to the pumpkin patch to look for a new pumpkin.
Not only is this a fall-spirited activity, but it also supports local farmers. Unlike going to Publix to pick a pumpkin out of athat bulky, musty cardboard bin they always have (you know what I’m talking about), at pumpkin patches there is a variety of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. You can bring home anything from a traditional round, orange pumpkin to a funky green gourd.
2. Carve pumpkins
Perhaps you’re one of those “buy a pumpkin and stick it on the front porch” types. Well, I say once you’ve picked your pumpkin you have to bust out that knife and get to carving. I tend to stick to the typical jack-o-lantern (anything else I try usually ends in a disaster), but there areis an infinite number of designs you can (attempt) to recreate though according to senior Leslie Lewallen, “there are always pumpkin fails.”
You can go with classic triangle eyes and a mouth with rectangle teeth. You can get creative and try different shapes, like stars, for its eyes. Or maybe your pumpkin can look scared or surprised that its guts have been removed, or you can go a totally different route and carve a design into your pumpkin. I’ve seen everythings from bats to superhero logos. Just go for it! The possibilities are endless.
3. Watch “scary” Halloween movies
You probably noticed the quotations around “scary” movies. When I asked my peers what movies they like to watch during the fall / Halloween time, they all seemed to have similar answers. They enjoy watching movies like Halloweentown and (my personal favorite) Hocus Pocus. Though these movies are Halloween-spirited, they aren’t nail-bitingly scary.
If you’re the type of person who loves a good horror movie, some recommendations from fellow horror-movie-lovers are Scream, The Conjuring, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Since I am not a fellow horror-movie-lover, I can’t bring myself to watch these movies or read the descriptions (I really don’t like horror movies), so you’ll have to watch them yourself and not let me know anything about them.
4. Bake fall treats
Who doesn’t love a yummy, fall-themed treat? When I think of fall / Halloween, something that immediately comes to mind is the Pillsbury Halloween cookies. Those ready-to-bake cookies have infested my Pinterest feed, and I’m not complaining. No mixing and no mess with the reward of 20 pumpkin or ghost cookies in just minutes? Sign me up.
If you would rather test your baking skills, some fun treats to make are apple crisp, pecan pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cupcakes. Like carving pumpkins, when I try an extravagant recipe it usually ends in a mess that will take twice as long to clean up as it did to make. My strategy is to put “easy-to-make” in front of any recipe I’m searching for and go from there.
5. Decorate your home
The biggest debate of all is over when you should start decorating. For me, as soon as the clock hits midnight on October first, I put up the lights and blow up the inflatable ghosts (not really at midnight, but you get the point). Some people wait until mid-October to start decorating, and others would rather not put them up at all, keeping their decorations in the attic collecting dust.
No matter when you start to decorate, people tend to have different approaches when it comes to the actual decorations. Some stick to the scary side with tombstones and skulls scattered across their yard. Others take the stylish approach and focus on setting out colorful pumpkins and doormats that read “hey boo!”
The perfect example of this diversity of decor is in my neighborhood. If Halloween could throw up decorations, you would get my house. We have a ten-foot inflatable ghost, an inflatable spider hanging off of the balcony, a graveyard with multiple body parts sticking out of it, spider webs, orange and purple lights, and more.
Across the street from me, however, my neighbors have put out a plethora of pumpkins of different colors, shapes, and sizes. They have pretty lights, and though I’ve never walked up to their door before, I bet they have a cliche fall doormat. Even though our houses are polar opposites when it comes to decorations, we are both getting into the fall / Halloween spirit, and that’s what matters.
Of course, once October 31 passes, we will be turning our attention to Thanksgiving and winter holidays. Hopefully, it will be cold enough to wear our puffers while we argue about when to replace those orange and purple lights with red and green ones.
