Black Cats, Jack-o-Lanterns and Pumpkins

Miraculously, it has only been about 4 weeks since my last post...so I'm back to chat for a minute about Halloween. It's not one of my favorite holidays and I'm not sure why, because my birthday is the next day, but after childhood, it never really did much for me. I wasn't keen on going to Halloween parties for teens or adults...it just seemed silly to me. I don't love ghoulish, zombie-like make-up, either, but I do love kitties, including black kitties.

The last in a long line of kitties with whom I've shared my life and home and consider family is the only all-black kitty (save a tiny spot of white on his neck) that I've ever had. He's my pal and nearly 18, I think. I've had him since he was born, and I've had black and white kitties - two great ones, in fact - but none all black, or nearly all black like him. What a good kitty he is, too. So, in honor of my nearly all black kitty, I have hung this cute little wooden ornament of a kitty with a jack-o-lantern. My late mother gave it to me decades ago and it now gets pride of place just under my mantel for Halloween.

 
Above this smiling black Halloween kitty is a bit of papercraft I picked up in a shop in the Hudson Valley that specialized in primitives. It's a simple little stiff paper banner that reads "Halloween...The Witch Is In...Halloween." It just amused me...so up it goes each year under the mantel with the black wooden Halloween kitty. Trick or Treat!

On top of the mantel I have the rest of small decorative items that I break out for Halloween each year - my ceramic pumpkin teapot that I posted about a few years ago here, a pair of simple metal votive candle holders with charming pumpkin cut-outs, and a terra cotta pottery candle holder with a slightly less charming jack-o-lantern face, and a couple of pretty ceramic pumpkins.

It's  not a lot of Halloween stuff at this point in life, but it's a few fun things to make me and my guests chuckle.

Years ago. being in upstate New York and a reader and collector of The New Yorker magazine covers for many years, I also have a few choice New Yorker covers that I've saved in my collection. You can see them online now on Pinterest and other places, but here is one of my favorites, from November 1, 1975 by artist Eugene Mihaesco, who provided 70 covers for the magazine from 1972-1992:

 
I like smiling jack-o-lanterns, or in this case, jack-o-suns...Happy Halloween!