Halloween Aussie Style

Australians don't really celebrate Halloween.  Some do, but as a country, Halloween is not a widely celebrated holiday and has only gained popularity in the past few years.  So what are the Americans to do?

#1. Jack-o-lanterns - There aren't many jack-o-lantern type pumpkins sold in the stores here, so I bought a nice, round watermelon to carve.  This was actually a better idea than I thought.  I wasn't gagging over the removal and smell of the pumpkin guts and we have lovely fruit to eat. It was a much easier item to carve too! An extra bonus was Dracula looks a little bloody thanks to the red flesh.

#2.  Costumes - There are very few costumes in very few stores. Fortunately, the girls' school had a free-dress day on the 31st with the theme of "beauty and the geek." Voila!  I have one Beauty and one Geek made almost entirely of things they had in the closets.

#3. Candy - ....or lollies as they're called here are sold in tiny bags.  Unfortunately for me we don't have a Costco (however one will be built by the fall of 2014), so there are no ginormous bags of mixed goodness.

 

#4. Trick-or-treating -  This Halloween tradition is getting more and more popular and on some streets in some neighborhoods there are balloons that are passed out with a note explaining the event.  If you are going to pass out candy, all you have to do is blow up the balloon and put it on your mailbox.  This didn't happen on our street.  I purchased some candy and for the first time ever we did not have one trick-or-treater. Maybe we will have to pass out notes to our street next year.

#5.  October Weather - Now that we are headed toward summer, it is getting quite warm and muggy here.  It is really hard to get in the holiday spirit without the hay bales and falling leaves.  Since pumpkin lattes aren't in the cards (and they are not even sold here) I thought would make a delicious watermelon-lime slushy with all of the watermelon we scooped out of our dracu-lantern.  Mmmmmm....it was quite tasty! 

Because I didn't know if any neighbors would be equipped with candy for door-to-door visits, I took Anna and Ashleigh across town to the Bulimba Hocus-Pocus Halloween festival to meet up with some friends.

 A little fairy floss (aka cotton candy), some lollies, and what seemed like hundreds of kids in costume made it feel more like Halloween.