Christmas Time Is Here!

The Ohio town where I live is a quaint, country town that is pretty much the epitome of the small town America that John Mellencamp describes in his song "Small Town". Yesterday was the annual Christmas celebration that consisted of a parade, a visit from Santa, and a tree lighting in the center of town. So, instead of cards today, I thought that I would share a few photos from the parade and some of our Christmas decor to help maybe get others in the holiday spirit as well.

It was a cold, foggy afternoon but the holiday spirit was out in full force with the parade traveling down the main road through town and businesses along the route participating by handing out candy canes, goodie bags, and even free hot chocolate. We nabbed a spot to watch the parade from the car since it was too cold to stand on the side of the road.

Trenton's finest led the parade followed by the color guard.

We've got lots of pizza joints in town (but then again so does any small town) but the local Domino's is the one that's most active in the community. They're always sponsoring and supporting the school teams and during the community yard sales in the spring, they sell pizzas at the corner of the main intersection for $5 each.

A local business on the left with a band in the back of the truck playing Christmas songs. On the right, somehow the Grinch snuck into the parade with this sweet car.

These horses were pretty cool to see. The trailer on the right are members of the local Moose lodge waving to the crowd and inviting everyone to the after party later that night.

Here's the main attraction, Santa riding into town on an old fire engine! I couldn't get a good shot unfortunately.

After the parade, we went over to the farm market where Santa was waiting to greet everyone and take free pictures. This was the line to get in.

Here's my two year old son Jamie with Santa. The last few times we've took him to see Santa, he never really liked it or was scared. This year, he really enjoyed it and actually told Santa what he wanted for Christmas!

As far as our house, here's a few pictures of how we decorated this year

A big Christmas "Hello!" from Mr. Snowman!

The heart of our display, inflatable Snoopy, light-up Rudolph with a blinking nose, candy canes lining out sidewalk, and a small, light-up Snoopy that stopped working after the rain we had a week or so ago.

You've heard of the Fantastic Mr. Fox? Meet the Fantastic Inflatable Mr. Fox!

As I mentioned, Snoopy stopped working after it rained really hard one night. One of the bulbs got water in it and shorted out.

Our tree! It's not as big as the Griswold family Christmas tree but it'll do for our little house. I'm hoping for lots of cards under the tree come Christmas morning!

Just to close it out, here's a song that I think represents the season really well from one of my favorite Christmas specials A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful and happy holiday season.

Thanks for reading ... tomorrow, more cards!

The 2015 Halloween Mood Display

I love everything there is about Halloween ... cheap candy, wacky seasonal foods, fall festivals, the crispness in the night air, horror movies, and the old WCW pay-per-view series "Halloween Havoc". Last year, my spirit was at an all time low though. Looking back on it, I'm not sure why. So, in order to jump start my Halloween spirit last year, I took a page from Matt over at Dinosaur Dracula (where he has already started his Halloween countdown) and made what he calls a "mood table". The purpose of said table is to have one place in your house that is convenient with all things Halloween, be it scary movies, books of ghost stories, etc. and helps the Halloween spirit come alive.

This year, it seems, my Halloween spirit is at an all-time high and I was really excited to put together the sequel to the mood table. However, knowing how my 2-year old son likes to get into things, I decided it was a more logical idea to change it up this year and do a "mood display" instead. Last weekend, my wife and I didn't have anything planned so we got out the Halloween decor and got to work. I present the 2015 Halloween Mood Display ...

I took the archway on the wall between the living room and kitchen and turned it into the center of Halloween in our house. It's got everything you could ever need in one spot ... books, movies, and a Ghostbusters pail that will soon be filled up with candy. And yes, you have to have lights as you want it to be able to glow at night when the lights are off and you're watching Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

Here are some close-ups going from left to right across the display ...

Here we've got three Funko figures from The Walking Dead, one of my wife's favorite shows, a green monster that exerts an evil laugh when squeezed, and a decorative pail.

Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees hanging out. I'm on the lookout for a Freddy Krueger figure to join them.

On the opposite end, it's Ash from Evil Dead and Army of Darkness and Billy from Saw. If I can find a Leatherface figure, then it'll be a party!

Finally, the fun section where my books of ghost stories and my horror movie collection awaits to be viewed with the creepy clown guy standing guard. Also, you can't have Halloween in my opinion without Snoopy and the timeless Peanuts Great Pumpkin special (which is the DVD in the orange case).

I feel the Halloween spirit more than ever this year and this or display is a big part of it. I hope you enjoyed reading about this and hopefully this will inspire you to do your own mood display, mood table, or whatever else. If you do decide to do one, and this post inspired you to do so, then I feel like I've succeeded in making the world a better place.