80+ Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Teenagers

 

I go hard for Christmas.

Just... I'm not telling YOU to go hard for Christmas. I don't care if you keep it simple and meaningful, if you do the four-present trend or take a vacation instead of gifts or whatever. I'm just telling you that *I* personally go hard. I, personally, get a huge kick out of maintaining a ton of traditions that I created when the kids were small (while quietly ditching the ones I didn't like--Advent calendars are too much work!), indulging in all the seasonal novelty foods and drinks, unabashedly using the Christmas season as an excuse to make Matt and the kids do all kind of family activities with me that they'd probably rather skip, and buying and making them presents. Christmas is like my own unpaid two-month part-time job, and I don't even care. Do what you love and you'll never work a day, etc.

Presents might be my favorite, though. I am ALL ABOUT the buying and making of thoughtful gifts. I love researching everyone's interests to see what might make a good present, and picking out or making stuff for them, trying to surprise them with new stuff that they didn't already know they would love. The younger kid once sent me a super offensive Tiktok basically mocking the way that I apparently watch them open their gifts, seeking emotional fulfillment in their response, and I couldn't even be mad because it was definitely true.

So yes, my teenagers still get stockings. MATT even gets a stocking, for Christ's sake, because that's how hard I go. Just... there's all this tiny shit that I want to make and buy them for Christmas, and where on Earth can tiny shit go except in a stocking that I handmade for each person six years ago based on their current interests, so that no matter how grown up that nearly grown-up teenager thinks she is, every Christmas morning she will be pulling her presents out of a My Little Pony stocking?

The pets also have stockings. Don't even talk to me about this, because I will not listen to reason.

Anyway, here are the basic categories that I use when picking out tiny stuff for my teenagers' stockings. 

COVID Stuff

I don't know about your teenagers, but MY teenagers are (in some ways, ahem) much more conscious about hygiene these days, and they're thrilled to get nice, new pandemic supplies.

• hand sanitizer. Spring for the more expensive ones that look cute and maybe have a nice smell. They're more festive!
• masks. We mostly use disposable masks these days, although the younger kid has a couple of cute Nutcracker masks that I sewed her that she wears during rehearsals, so cute novelty sewn masks could be a hit. These are the really excellent and more expensive disposable masks that we wear when we're going somewhere really fraught, and these are the regular disposable masks that we wear everywhere else. One teenager doesn't care about color and style, but the other one is VERY pleased to have black!
• travel sizes of sanitizing supplies. Have you seen the little travel Lysol sprays? They're super cute, and this time of year is apparently when you have to snap them up, since I couldn't find them anywhere when I was packing for spring and summer trips this year. The little packs of sanitizing wipes are also good for teenagers to throw in a backpack, but make sure you get ones that don't have bleach.

Accessories

Even though they're into different types of things, both of my teenagers love stuff to decorate their notebooks and laptops and backpacks with.

• enamel pins. Teenagers mostly put these on their backpacks or bags, so you also want to buy the pin locks for them. You can buy officially licensed pins, especially for big brands like Disney, or fan-made pins from indie sellers.
• patches. Some kids are patch kids and some kids aren't, but the kids who ARE can't have enough and will put them everywhere, from their jackets to their book bags to their jeans. One of my teenagers is big into David Bowie at the moment, and there are some very good handmade Bowie patches on etsy.
• pinback buttons. These are usually a lot cheaper than the enamel pins! We can make our own pinback buttons, but nothing can beat vintage, which teenagers are just now almost old enough to appreciate.
• stickers. One of my teenagers super loves the cute novelty stickers you can buy in sets on Amazon, which is handy, because I can break up a set and toss a few into her stocking and a few more into her Easter basket. The other teenager isn't so much into these, but LOVES glow-in-the-dark star stickers for her room. These gem window stickers are a little spendier than I'd usually put in a stocking, but if a kid's bedroom window faces the sun at any point during the day, they're quite magical!

DIY Kits

I save bigger kits for their main gifts, but I feel like small kits are an easy way to tempt one of my teenagers into trying a new type of project or giving them a no-fuss, low commitment way to do one of their favorite activities.

• art kits. My artsy teenager likes to try out new skills, but a big, expensive kit would stress her out--what if she messed up? Didn't like it? The COMMITMENT!!!!! Stuff like calligraphy pens and a book on hand lettering, or charcoals in a little tin are more accessible and easier on a perfectionist's stress levels.
• craft kits. It's weirdly difficult to find a craft kit cheap enough for a stocking, but I can usually find a couple of good deals before Christmas. Right now for instance, this quilling kit is nine dollars instead of twenty! If nothing else, the big-box craft stores like Joann or Michaels will have a 50-% off one regular-priced item coupon at some point. And if you, yourself, are crafty-ish, you can also DIY a kit by buying a simple pattern and packaging it with the supplies to make it.
• models. Small affordable models, however, are really easy to find. One teenager loves making any kind of models, particularly the 3D wooden ones, and the other teenager, while not being especially into model-making, itself, nevertheless enjoys ones connected to her pop culture interests.
• small LEGO sets. Even if your teenager doesn't like LEGOs in particular, you can probably find a kit that fits into one of their other interests. If your kid's not a LEGO purist, I really like the indie kits you can find on etsy. Here's a little unicorn!

Food

My teenagers might be especially food-motivated, but food is ALWAYS a hit in their stockings!

• candy. I mean, of course! I like to give them holiday-themed candy, but I also like to give them international candies and anything unusual I might find. When Matt and I went to Chattanooga this September, we found a giant store full of every possible candy, and we picked out a lot of cool treats for the kids' stockings.
• hot sauce, coffee syrup, etc. One of my teenagers, in particular, is all about new hot sauces and interesting coffee syrups, so a new version or a travel size makes a fun surprise. I'm usually able to pick her up something new just from the regular grocery store or the international grocery while I'm shopping, which is a big bonus!
• inside jokes. The kids and I super love to visit grocery stores when we travel, and if I can later find their favorite food finds again, they make fun stocking stuffers. My biggest win was the year that I actually found Canadian Whippets at our local Big Lots! Never All-Dressed Ridgies, though... I swear, the next time we visit Canada I'm bringing back a case of All-Dressed Ridgies.
• novelty food stuff. This little slushy maker really works, and my teenager who got it in her stocking one year still adores it. I've also given them weird things like these Miracle Berry tablets, which turned into a fun family night of eating them and then tasting sour foods. Freeze-dried candy is also a Whole Thing.
• their favorite treat, upsized. Did you know that they make both giant Snickers AND giant gummy worms and gummy bears? Not for the faint of heart, but VERY fun to receive!

Fidgets, Sensory, and Solitary Play

We all need stuff to entertain us that isn't a screen, although to be fair, one of my teenagers and I still need to have something to listen to while we're messing around with some solitary activity. The other teenager and Matt are bafflingly comfortable simply listening to the thoughts in their heads, shudder. 

• fidgets. My teenagers have never been Rubiks Cube kids, even though those appeared in their stockings one year, so not everything will stick. They do seem to love open-ended sensory fidgets, though, things like Shashibo or Thinking Putty or fidget rings. These water sensory thingies might seem too babyish for a teenager, but I assure you that they are PERFECT for a kid to keep on her work desk to zone out to for a few minutes when her geometry homework is pissing her off. 
• solitary games. We all love the pocket ThinkFun and IQ solitaire logic games, and manipulatives like pentominoes or Dog Pile that can live on the coffee table for anyone to fiddle with. 
• travel-sized puzzle books. One of my teenagers adores Sudoku and will work a travel-sized Sudoku book all the way through in odd moments out and about with no wi-fi. The other teenager hasn't quite found a puzzle type that she consistently loves, but will dip into just about anything.

Grooming/Hygiene and Necessities

I happily fill out the nice presents in their stockings with all the small, boring, useful crap that they're always needing more of. Bonus points if I add something that they're constantly borrowing from me and never returning--2021 was the year each kid got her very own set of nail clippers!

• first aid kit. The kids already have decent travel first aid kits that they made to earn their First Aid badges, and they've come in SO handy on multiple occasions. Now that they're old enough to be out and about by themselves constantly, I also stock them up with travel OTC medicines for their kits like iboprofin, cough suppresant, allergy medicine, anti-nausea medication, etc.
• hair stuff. ALWAYS hair stuff! Travel hairbrushes, mini hairspray for my ballerina, the exact make and model of the only acceptable but hard-to-find ponytail rings, the good brand of bobby pins for the ballerina, scrunchies, detangler spray, and on and on and on. These teenagers have so much hair!
• lip stuff. For my teenagers, that's pretty much just fun Carmex, but it's important!
• nail stuff. I tried giving them nail brushes one year, but it didn't work and my horse girl's fingernails are still a horror on barn days, blech. The nail clippers have vastly lowered the number of times my own nail clippers have been stolen, however! Nail polish for those who wear it is an easy win.
• skin stuff. Good lotion, the one specific kind of face soap, scrubbies or pumice bars. I'm personally high-key obsessed with Duke Cannon, so I stick those in lots of stockings.
• travel tissues. Cheap, and easy to throw in a backpack!

Reading, Writing, and Drawing

There's generally always some kind of something you can find that a teenager will like to read, and even though all the kids use Chromebooks at school these days, they still generally like nice writing supplies. 

• post-its. Buying the kids their own awesome post-its keeps them from stealing my boring ones.
• nice pens. Drawing pens are a little on the spendy side, but they're a nice size for stuffing a stocking. And artist or not, everyone loves gel pens.
• tiny notebooks. These are super useful even if they don't think they will be. We actually use these a lot for passing notes and games back and forth when we travel, and especially in these Chromebook times, it's handy to always keep some little thing to jot notes or doodles on in a backpack.

Scented Stuff

To be fair, only one of my teenagers is really into this, so maybe just try out one thing first and see if it sticks. But the teenager who loves scented things REALLY loves them, and is thrilled to receive any or all of the below items:

• bath bombs and shower tabs. We don't have a bathtub, but shower steamers give a good pop of scent.
• drawer sachets. One of my teenager loves to store a scent with her clothes, and it actually does make her clothes smell lovely! 
• essential oil warmer and essential oils. Double-check that you're not going to poison the pets, first! If your teenager takes to it, you'll forevermore be able to pop a small bottle of essential oil into their stockings and Easter baskets.
• incense burner and incense. Same with the incense! My teenager who loves incense burns it enough that I'm able to restock her every Christmas and Easter and birthday. Incense and burners are also so cheap that you can spend a little more on handmade and still not go over budget.
• perfume. If your teenager wears it, this site has some cute and unusual scents--I love Crayon!
• scented candles. There are cute candles at places like Trader Joe's or Aldi's for five bucks-ish if you're not sure if your teenager will like them. I also really like these niche, fan-centric candles on etsy, with fun scents that remind you of your favorite books.

Put an orange in the toe of each stocking, and then you're finished!

The New and Improved Way to Press Flowers in the Microwave

I spent years pressing flowers in the microwave using the supplies that I had on hand--a terra cotta plant dish, a Pyrex bowl, and paper towels.

But when my Girl Scout troop also wanted to learn how to press flowers in the microwave, I realized that what's good enough for me is not NEARLY good enough for them! They needed proper materials and a clearer method.

A trip to the town's ReStore scored me a whole troop's worth of unglazed terra cotta tiles at something like ten cents apiece. And simply substituting white typing paper--even the back sides of used typing paper!--turned out to be a much easier method than using paper towels, with a cleaner-looking result, as well.

So here's the new and improved way to turn your microwave into a flower press!

You will need:

• two unglazed terra cotta tiles. The larger the better, as the size of the tile is the limiting factor in the size of flower you'll be able to press. The tops should be completely smooth.
• plain typing paper, several sheets. Recycle used typing paper, as long as at least one side is blank and clean.
• freshly-picked flowers. I think the ones that have a distinctive front and back are most easily pressed, but you do you!

1. Set up the microwave flower press. 

The bread of your flower press sandwich consists of two unglazed terra cotta tiles, the unglazed fronts facing each other. 

My tiles have gotten dirty because the backsides of the paper that I've been laying against them has had printing on it. It won't affect the flowers, though, and they'll wash clean. 

Fold a stack of 4-5 pieces of typing paper in half. Place the flowers you'd like to press in the fold of the typing paper stack, then fold the top of the stack over the flowers and sandwich the stack in between the terra cotta tiles.

If your flowers are especially big and juicy, you may have to dissect them a bit before you place them in the press.

2. Microwave the flower press. 

Pop the entire flower press into the microwave, and microwave it for approximately 30 seconds.

Use an oven mitt to lift off the top tile, then check the flowers. They should feel dry, not damp. If they're still damp, continue to microwave in 15-20 second intervals, checking in between. 

If the flowers are already a little crispy, then you've microwaved them too long. Better luck next time!

When the flowers are perfect, let the entire press cool for a few minutes before you remove them. If you've got several terra cotta tiles, you can keep a few flower presses going simultaneously:

While a third person grates cheese, ahem.

A DIY microwave flower press is SUCH a time saver! Even fairly young kids can work it, as long as an adult handles the hot parts, and this makes the entire process of collecting, pressing, and studying or crafting with flowers a lot more enjoyable for a small child. 

You can also use this press in tandem with a traditional flower press--which you can also DIY! Put flowers into the traditional press right away while you're hiking, then transfer them to the microwave press to finish them off when you get home. 

Holiday Crafts: Leaf-Carved Pumpkin

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World way back in 2013!

Yes, we DID finally carve our pumpkins! 

To be honest, I was quietly hoping to get away without carving pumpkins at all this year, especially after Halloween came and went without the kiddos making a peep about Jack-o-lanterns. 

However, last week my older daughter, passing by the gorgeous whole pumpkins decorating our front porch, suddenly seemed to notice them for the first time since early October. She did an actual double-take, then shouted, "Hey! When are we going to carve our pumpkins?!?" 

Busted! 

Fortunately, the kiddos were perfectly happy with my suggestion that we carve the pumpkins into something appropriate for Thanksgiving, not Halloween, and that's how we ended up with our leaf-carved pumpkins. They're festive without being spooky, use real leaves as stencils, and are, thankfully, just as fun to carve as Jack-o-lanterns are. 

Here's how to make them: 

1. Collect autumn leaves. Go on a leaf walk around your neighborhood, and collect some nice samples of the autumn leaves around you. The best leaves will be supple, not brittle, and medium-sized or smaller; we did try one giant sycamore leaf on one pumpkin, and although it looks really cool, it's WAY too big and lets too much light through. 

2. Hollow out your pumpkin. Don't forget to save your seeds to roast or make dehydrated crackers with, and to compost the guts or feed them to the chickens. 

Years ago, my Aunt Pam also taught me a neat Jack-o-lantern trick: use a fork to score the underside of the lid piece of the pumpkin, and rub cinnamon into the cuts. The heat of the candle inside will waft a cinnamon scent across your porch every night, and knowing what I know about herbs and oils these days, I wouldn't be surprised if that cinnamon helped preserve the pumpkin a bit, as well.

   

3. Stencil the leaves onto the pumpkin. Hold each leaf to the pumpkin and trace around it with a Sharpie. The more leaves you can fit on, the more festive your pumpkin will look, in my opinion, although my kids didn't carve a ton of leaves, and I still think their pumpkins look pretty cool. 

And if you've ever been faced with a half-finished Jack-o-lantern and a kid who insists that her hand is just too *tired* to make a mouth, whine whine, you'll appreciate the fact that you can just as easily be done carving after one leaf as you can after twenty.  

4. Cut out the leaves. Yes, that's my kid wielding a steak knife. I can't bring myself to buy any of those plastic Jack-o-lantern knife thingies, even though I've heard they work great. (Note from Future Julie: I now own those plastic Jack-o-lantern knife thingies, and they DO work great! Way better than steak knives!)

Know what also works great? Steak knives. 

5. Shine on. We popped our pumpkin back out onto the porch with a rolled beeswax candle inside, and we LOVE how it looks. The kiddos got to carve their pumpkins, I didn't have to do it with all the other million things that I had to do before Halloween, and it looks like we actually did them Thanksgiving-themed on purpose. 

Here's hoping that next year, I don't have to come up with a Christmas-themed Jack-o-lantern concept...

You Should Watch The Shining With One of Your Teenagers (While the Other One Hides in Her Room)

Her spooky contribution turned out to be last-minute roasted vegetables, because apparently the spookiest dinner of all is one that doesn't follow proper nutritional guidelines!

That was the night that we intended to watch The Shining, but alas, in the end I could not convince Will that vintage horror isn't actually scary--she used to be so much more gullible when she was younger! So it was a week later, over Chinese food that we bought with the excuse that I needed the specific type of break-apart disposable bamboo chopsticks for our gingerbread Cuneiform project, that three of us finally got around to watching the movie that two of us had been highly anticipating.

I was especially excited because I'd just finished reading both The Shining (started on a Friday while subbing in a high school Agriculture classroom for the day and finished the next morning because I just about could not put it down) AND its sequel that I had not even known existed, Doctor Sleep:

I'd certainly read The Shining before, because I was a hyperlexic kid who tore through Stephen King in elementary school (kudos to my grandparents for never censoring a book! We shall believe that this was for philosophical reasons and not because they DNGAF what I did as long as I wasn't bothering them). I also saw the film version multiple times on cable (see above re: grandparents and lack of censorship). My takeaways as a kid were that both were memorable and likeable, but not terribly loveable.

Lol, I guess all that stuff about alcoholism and mental health and abuse sailed right over my head, thank goodness!

So, the book version of The Shining is actually brilliant. Doctor Sleep is even better. And the film version of The Shining is also brilliant, and different enough from the book that it's still surprising even if you just read the book a week ago.

I read somewhere that Stephen King, an alcoholic, wrote The Shining at a time when he was actively, heavily drinking. And that's why Jack, who ostensibly spends 99% of the book sober, still acts drunk and has no positive coping skills to manage his sobriety. The main character of Doctor Sleep is also an alcoholic, but, like the Stephen King who wrote him, he becomes sober and, like King, utilizes AA and its resources. That sobriety, in turn, leads to the protagonist making different choices than the Jack Torrance of The Shining could have. The depiction of the alcoholic character in each book felt very real, and it's fascinating to me that it comes so directly from the author's own experiences. 

My teenager is the perfect age to appreciate the way that the film version of The Shining is a WHOLE MOOD. OMG the scenery. OMG the sound. OMG the interior design. OMG THE CARPETS!!!

I mean, look at the little organdy dresses that the Grady children wear! I 100% had almost the same dress in peach. 

You know how when your kids are tiny, you're so excited to see their little faces when something magical happens? Christmas morning when they realize that Santa came, or the first time they see Cinderella's castle at Disney, or you break open a geode? You guys. When about halfway through the movie I casually asked my kid, "So what do you think that whole 'redrum' business is all about?" and she was all, "I dunno it's weird though," I was SO EXCITED to see her face during the big reveal! 

Top Ten Memory for sure!

The scene where they throw around the n-word sucked, though. They said it once and we all went, "WHOAH!" Then they said it again. And then a third time just to push the point, I guess. AND that's one of the parts that they lifted straight from the book, so... yuck.

The next day, this commentary track sustained me through coffee, breakfast, housecleaning, putting away Halloween decorations, and just some general Sunday-level puttering:

I kept having to go find people, though, to interrupt their own Sunday-level puttering and tell them all my Shining fun facts. Here are my favorites:

• The Steadicam operator (who invented the Steadicam for this film!) used a boom to raise and lower the Steadicam as it was pushed along, and at one point he discovered that young Danny weighed exactly the same as the Steadicam, so sometimes he would remove the Steadicam from the boom, put Danny on it instead, and fly him around the set while Danny shrieked with laughter.
• In my favorite scene from the film, Wendy takes a peek at the page in Jack's typewriter, and sees that all he's written, over and over, is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Weirded out, she goes over to the six-inch tall stack of pages he's already written, and starts flipping through them, only to see that they ALL SAY THE SAME THING. Every page is laid out differently, with paragraph breaks and parts for dialogue and other constructions, but it all says the same thing. It's SO GOOD. So apparently, Kubrick wanted Wendy to be able to flip through the pages at random and have everything that she pulled up look cool like that, so for months, every spare second that his secretary had was spent in typing up all those pages herself. 
• Kubrick insisted on shooting the film in chronological order, which is not how films are usually shot. The shooting also ran months over schedule, and combined with that, the Steadicam operator said that pretty much as soon as he got on set, little Danny commenced a huge growth spurt. It's not noticeable because the film was shot in order, but the operator said that if you took a shot of Danny from the first scenes of the film and put it next to a shot of him from one of the last scenes, he's visibly older by the final scene. Which probably makes the film that much more realistic on a subliminal level!

Ugh, I did not need one more must-watch horror movie to add to our yearly viewing in October, but I probably can't let another October go by without re-watching The Shining. I also dearly desire to create the REDRUMMUS and the hedge maze in pesto on top of pasta like in this viewing party, and I very much need someone to agree to dress up like the Grady children with me for trick-or-treating.

And I LOVE these decorations, because even more Halloween decorations is clearly something I was (not) needing...

I Found Another Old Cemetery with the Weirdest Headstone Yet

I have been carefully honing what my partner calls my "old lady hobby" of poking around old cemeteries by, well, poking around old cemeteries!

But. I mean. They're interesting!

You get to drive around old country roads and take in the scenery while you look for them, and sometimes there are herds of deer or massive brambles of wild black raspberries. Then when you find one, you get to wander around and read all the stones and be all, "Huh, Thelma. You don't see a name like Thelma anymore!" Or "Awww, sixteen children and they all died from something penicillin could have cured in one dose. The 1800s were so sad!"

Okay, it IS an old lady hobby. Whatever, it's fun.

It's especially fun in autumn. Look at how lovely Mount Salem Cemetery is, tucked into the woods up on a little hill by the highway. You'd never know it was there if you didn't know it was there:

As far as I can tell, this cemetery was lost sometime after 1937, then rediscovered in the early 2010s, after which it was fenced and maintained and some headstones repaired--

Consort, eh? I can't tell if they're being rude or not.

--but I can't find any evidence from the past few years that the cemetery is still on the must-visit list of more than a handful of people.

I found a list of tombstone inscriptions from Mount Salem Cemetery that was sent into the Indiana Magazine of History's June 1937 edition, and I think it would be interesting to go back to the cemetery to compare the list to what's still visible. 

You can also use that list of inscriptions to identify tombstones. Here, for example, must be Richard Perry!

This tombstone is the strangest one I've seen yet:

Look closer at it. William Ross lived to be 116 years old!

Surely not, right?

But people living in his own lifetime believed it of him. Here's an article written about him when he was 115 years old.

William Ross' stone is proof that the cemetery is still being maintained in some fashion, because when this photograph was taken in 2020, his headstone was still broken.

I hate seeing headstones leaned up against trees. You'll likely never figure out exactly where they go back to, so now all that precious local history is context-less. 

I also thought it was strange that there wasn't any yucca growing anywhere. Yucca is THE plant that you'll find in local cemeteries here. It's not native, though--I've heard stories that it might have been brought up from Florida?--so is it possible that this cemetery predates the yucca fad?

I must make a mental note to go back in the spring and look for daffodils.

P.S. Here are my other favorite old cemeteries so far:

• Mt. Ebal Cemetery
• Friendship Cemetery
• Rose Hill Cemetery
• Allens Creek Cemetery

P.P.S. Want to know more about my adventures in life, and my looming mid-life crisis? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Halloween 2022: Rapunzel and Her Tower

This is the last time for who knows how many years that I'll get to spend my second favorite holiday in person with all of my favorite people.

So we did it all! 

Can you be too old to trick-or-treat? NOPE! 

Syd's got ballet all Halloween evening, so at least my practically fully-grown teenagers only trick-or-treated once, here at our local state park's event. 

Rapunzel's Tower was a hit, but I think it was also Will's most awkward costume to date, and this kid has worn some awkward costumes over the years!

Can you eat too much Halloween candy? NOPE!

This Halloween snack mix looked better on TikTok. It turns out that it's nearly impossible to create a Halloween-themed movie night snack mix that the entire family will like... so instead we created one that nobody loved!

Can you watch too many scary movies! Yes, but also NOPE!

This year's traditional meatloaf mummy for our traditional Family Movie Night!

The meatloaf mummy was joined by skull mashed potatoes, cheesy breadstick bones, the above cocktails and mocktails, orange dipped pretzels, a DIY candy apple bar, and after Syd got a look at the menu, she roasted some vegetables so we don't all die of malnutrition.

Can there be too many carved Jack-o-lanterns on your porch? NOPE!

Okay, but can there be too many Jack-o-lanterns on your head? ALSO NOPE!

I am going to frame this entire photo shoot and put every photo on my walls, all year round.

But surely otherwise there can be too many Halloween craft projects. THAT IS VERY MUCH ALSO A NOPE!

These babies get to stay on the coffee table through Thanksgiving!

The only thing we're missing out on is neighborhood trick-or-treating tonight, since us country folk don't get the pleasure of kids coming around to our houses. But when we pick Syd up from ballet super late, we're still then going to pick up our traditional Halloween take-out pizza, and we're still going to stay up even super later watching our very last horror movie of the season while eating the rest of the kids' weekend trick-or-treat haul.

And then Nutcracker season begins!

Pumpkinheads, or, Put on a Jack-o-Lantern and Take One Thousand Photos

 

So, this is probably my favorite Halloween activity ever. Thank you, TikTok!

I've been wanting to do this pumpkinhead photo shoot since last October--you know, back when it was actually trendy. I didn't end up getting around to it--so many Halloween crafts, so little time!--but when a teenager specifically requested Halloween projects this month, I wrote it at the top of my to-do list in red letters.

Will, who is by far the most practical of us, declined the opportunity to dress in flannel, put a heavy Jack-o-lantern on her head, and stand around while I took one thousand photos. Fortunately, though, a couple of other family members were willing to indulge me on this beautiful fall day at the peak of autumn foliage:

I took SO MANY PHOTOS! We just kept thinking of poses that it would be funny and awesome to do with a Jack-o-lantern on one's head!

The key to true magic, though, is having a graphic designer at one's service:

This photo shoot was so fun, and I am so happy with the photos! And afterwards, our pumpkinheads joined the rest of our Jack-o-lantern family:

I've longed for years to buy more of those carvable fake pumpkins to add to our menagerie, but the big-box stores eventually realized how awesome they are and they've been stupid expensive for a while now. I bought them yearly when the kids were small, though, and those kid-carved forever pumpkins are my favorites, so I'm pretty stoked to have a new type of magical Halloween memorabilia to display next year!