It is the day after Halloween which means we can now start getting excited about the upcoming holidays.  For us in England that begins with fireworks this month and ends with fireworks in the new year.  Before I start making my blog about how much I love this time of the year, let us recap over what it is like to celebrate Halloween as an expat in Bath, England.  

For a few months we had been talking about costumes with the idea that our whole family would go as one thing together.  In the end it turned out that my husband would not be home in time from work to participate and I did not have much in the way to pull off what I wanted to do either.  For our first Halloween here in 2011 my boys had costumes mailed over from the US, last year they celebrated Halloween in the US, and this year it took us all of five minutes per kid to get ready to Trick or Treat.  My eldest went as a mummy in a judo uniform and strips of muslin and my youngest as a Frankenstein monster with green face paint and some make up from my kit.  It was the quickest we have ever prepared for Halloween. But to to be real it is not really that big of a thing here in England.  Only a few shops in town will have a few select halloween items.   Most of the kids costumes I have seen in England have always been in the genre of: witch, mummy, werwolf, vampire, etc.  The more common themes of Halloween.

We almost did not get to carve pumpkins this year, but managed to find three large ones left the day before while we were in town.  On Halloween my boys and I had fun carving our pumpkins.  I decided to try an owl and I kinda like the way he turned out this year.  You should see the pumpkins we painted and carved last year while stuck in the US.

I had not bought any candy in town because I saw how expensive a tiny bag with maybe 12 packs in it would be and it did not seem worth it.  Especially when I did the comparison of candy buying in the US.  So we ended up making cookies on Halloween with homemade sugar icing and handing those out to the kids who knocked on our door. 

For trick or treating we knocked on a couple of doors where we lived and then walked the forty five minutes to where one of my boys goes to school and trick or treated on maybe twenty different doors. This was way more active area then where we lived before.  I believe in 2012 we only found two doors to knock on and a pub that was giving out candy to the kids.  My husband some how found us in the darkness and was able to join in on the Halloween fun.  

To be fair Halloween is not one of my favourite holidays.  Some how even with that fact mentioned I got a little bit of ‘culture shock mixed in with homesickness’ creep up on me while we were out.   It was really strange to me when it happened because I do not really have a home to miss.  As an expat it can be very unsettling when this happens and you never know when it can strike. Luckily as soon as my husband met up with us he was able to help me feel much better and it soon but all dissipated. Which I have to say if you ever feel that way while living abroad…let your family love on you.  It can make all the difference in the world.