Well, I figured if I can have Christmas in July — I should be able to have Halloween in August, right? 🤣 Unfortunately, I have just one Halloween puzzle to post at the moment. I plan to publish more spooky puzzles in October. I have several in my to do closet so that shouldn’t be too difficult a task.
I really like Vermont Christmas Company and their puzzles. The quality has always been very good on both their piece cut and their image resolution. There is almost nothing I hate more than a puzzle image where things are blurry and it makes the assembly so much more difficult than it should otherwise.
This one being only 550 pieces meant it wasn’t overly difficult, even in the trickier areas of the image like the trees and the house itself. It all came together pretty easily and I thoroughly enjoyed the build.
I think for this puzzle I actually started with the trees as I knew that area would be a little more difficult. It’s a beautiful sky too in my opinion. I really love the full, white moon against the bluish hue of the sky, and of course, the little witch up in the trees is adorable too.
Another thing I really enjoy about Vermont Christmas Company is the fit of the pieces. They are usually pretty snug, or at least tight enough for my favorite Stacey stance picture, and this one did not disappoint.
Growing up I was never into Halloween. I think it was mostly due to two reasons — 1) We lived about 14 miles outside of a very small town so I had no neighborhood to go trick or treating in — our closest neighbor was a few miles away; and 2) during the 80s, in California at least, there was a trend for a while where people were putting hypodermic needles in kid’s bags, or sometimes lacing the candy with drugs of some kind. This scared my parents and they would only let my brother take me into our small town and go to a couple of houses with people he knew.
This went on for several years when I was between the ages of about 6 – 8 or so. After that, I just lost all interest in even going or dressing up at all because I never got to go to more than a couple of houses anyway so what was the point.
It wasn’t until after I got married and went to my first “adult” Halloween party where I started liking it again. A close college buddy of Randy’s hosted a very elaborate Halloween party each year in southern California where he invited a lot of his clients and friends. There was always catered food, gambling tables, and he would design his house to a theme. It didn’t hurt that the guy’s cousin was a Hollywood set designer so you can imagine some of the crazy sets they came up with. We flew out three times from FL to CA for the party. The last time was when Derek was still an infant. They would also have a costume contest each year and guests voted on best costume. Randy and I won 2 out of the 3 years we attended which was awesome. We won as Shrek and Fiona one year and a gorilla carrying a zookeeper in a cage (Randy) another year. That one was mostly about Randy’s costume and I was an extra zookeeper. We even built a small cage out of PVC pipe to house Randy’s upper body as the trapped zookeeper with crisscrossed stuffed legs inside the cage, while the gorilla costume was Randy’s legs. The gorilla’s upper body and arms were stuffed and attached around the “cage”. It was a hysterical looking costume. I will have to see if I can find pictures of it and edit this posting if I find them. I know I have some somewhere.
Now, as a parent of two we have done many a trick or treating night when the boys were little and loved it. Then again, we’ve always lived in large actual nice neighborhoods where the kids all went trick or treating together and it was always a lot of fun. So I guess I’ve finally gotten over my dislike of Halloween — except for teenage trick or treaters who are rude, don’t dress up, and don’t say trick or treat or thank you after I put candy in their pillowcase bag that they’ve stuck in my face expecting me to just hand it over. That will never sit right with me and my entire family loves to tease me about my “hatred” of teenage trick or treaters! 🧙‍♀️