Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Mickey’s Halloween Castle

Product Description

From the Halloween Series of Snow Village, frightfully fun and painstakingly detailed. The haunts of this grouping will give you shivers of excitement. Mickey returns to Snow Village Halloween in animated style. The turret resembles a witches hat, which Mickey, dressed in which custom, flies around on is broom. Check the fun details, the gate is shaped like Mickey ears. Hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic lit building, animated, includes adapter cord and bulb.

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Mickey’s Halloween Castle Feature

• Hand Painted
• Porcelain
• Hand Crafted

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Grimsly Retirement Home

Product Description

From the Halloween Series of Snow Village, frightfully fun and painstakingly detailed. The haunts of this grouping will give you shivers of excitement. When Grimsly Manor retired last year, it seemed fitting that he would open a retirement home. The architecture was inspired by Grimsly’s former residence. Hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic lit building, includes light cord and bulb.

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Grimsly Retirement Home Feature

• Hand Painted
• Ceramic
• Hand Crafted

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Lot 13, Crystal Lake

Product Description

From the Halloween Series of Snow Village, frightfully fun and painstakingly detailed. The haunts of this grouping will give you shivers of excitement. What could be more frightening than a haunted trailer house? Complete with easy chair and fridge out front, the creepy look is enhanced by the special lighting effects. Note the Flamingo yard décor on the roof. Hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic lit building, LED lit, includes adapter cord.

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Lot 13, Crystal Lake Feature

• Hand Painted
• Ceramic
• Hand Crafted

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Haunted Rails Caboose

Product Description

From the Halloween Series of Snow Village, frightfully fun and painstakingly detailed. The haunts of this grouping will give you shivers of excitement. The end of the train includes the iconic carved pumpkin and plenty of spooky details. Hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic lit building, LED lit, to be used with 800001, Haunted Rails Engine and Coal Car.

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Haunted Rails Caboose Feature

• Hand Painted
• Ceramic
• Hand Crafted

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Retching Pumpkin Diner

Product Description

From the Halloween Series of Snow Village, frightfully fun and painstakingly detailed. The haunts of this grouping will give you shivers of excitement. Inspired by the creative pumpkin carvings, Retching Diner is full of “seedy” details. Special lit effect with acrylic roof portion. Hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic lit building, includes light cord and bulb.

Halloween Snow Village from Department 56 Retching Pumpkin Diner Feature

• Hand Painted
• Ceramic
• Hand Crafted

So, back to the story at hand. I made it home from substituting Wednesday afternoon in time to put on some jeans and a warm coat and start picking tomatoes. I had no idea there were so many tomatoes on the plants in Linton. In fact when I pulled up the plants, which were laying in a tangled mess, the stems reached over a foot over my head. I had no idea those plants were so large, but I will say the tomatoes from those plants were really nice compared to the others. I must have fertilized better, or maybe it was just the old real estate issue of location, location.

I tried to put a picture of the snow in this post for you. I even made Paulina run outside with her camera in the dark. Well that was the mistake. It was dark and all you can see is a black background with a white blob on it. Wow! She did snap one picture of the concrete steps in front of the house, but you see more of her toes than of the snow, so I decided not to use it.

This weekend we are heading to the Minot area to watch, help out, etc… the volleyball team in the big Des Lacs Invitational Tourney. Last year the team ended up in the upper end of that tourney. If they get into the top eight, they play in Burlington the whole time, but below eighth after the pool play, they go into Minot and play in the Bishop Ryan Gym to finish it out. The pool play starts tonight at 6 p.m. so between that and the away football game, the high school will be pretty empty this afternoon.

Hopefully we will get home with a little energy left. I was thinking we should take a drive to Herreid and see how things are doing in that area on Sunday. It might be nice to see the inside of a church again, but that will depend on the events of the weekend. Actually, going to church shouldn’t depend on anything except simply going to church. We didn’t know how good we had it when the little white church was just three houses from our place. How nice would it have been to actually have a minister and a congregation to keep that place going.

Everytime I think about that church being destroyed whether meaning the building or the congregation, I get so angry, and yet there was nothing any of us could do. Well, now I take that back. The more I think about it, that church building is sort of the symbol of do nothingness in our family. That age-old attitude of “let it go” and “don’t make any waves” and “it is what it is”. No really, it all sucks because no one had any **** to stand up to the tyrant holding the keys to the building and the papers that went with it. And even more so, no one had the willingness to cough up the cash to keep it going. Same reason we all let our roads and schools and other public places decay, we can’t raise taxes to pay for anything.

Final statement: We all want to live like big shots, but we want someone else to pay for it. What party is that? I am not so sure it fits the ideals of anything the Founding Fathers were after. But it does sound suspiciously like the beginning of our country. Go back and read the presidency of John Adams sometime. Same thing. Enough!!

Sunday morning, I’m all ready for church, attired in appropriately autumnal colors.  I’m even reasonably on time.  Before dashing out the door I remember that today’s high will be around 40, so I throw on a coat.  First dose of reality, snow on the step.  No big deal.  Snow all over the car.  Not too much snow, no big deal.  But then I can’t find the snowscraper.  Why oh why oh why do I go through this every year?  I never take the snowscraper out of the car.  I might move it from the  back seat to the trunk in about June, but I don’t remove it from the car.  My dear husband moves it  when he loads the car for the annual week at the beach.   (Yes, this is all his fault.)  And, of course, in August no one (that would be me) thinks to put it back in the car.

So here it is, Sunday October 30, and all I have in the car is a little hand scraper.  The search begins.  I know it must be in the mudroom because that’s where everything gets thrown.  And herein lies the problem.  Everything gets thrown in the mudroom.  If you’ve been to our house any day of the year except Thanksgiving, you know what the mudroom looks like…twenty pairs of shoes in various sizes, beekeeping equipment, hunting gear, a crossbow, dead plants, boxes of IBM equipment, dirty gardening gloves…you get the idea.  And somewhere in the accumulation is an ice scraper.

After screaming at the top of my lungs (you can do things like that when you live way out in the woods), I calm down and scan the mudroom.  The dusty icescraper lies just behind the pile of shoes.  Fine.  I’ll scrape the car and be on my way.  Ten minutes late is about normal for me.

But no.  Why would this be simple?  The mere two inches of snow on the car has hardened into a solid chunk.  I hack at the windshield and get that clear, but the roof is a solid sheet of frozen ammunition.  I am not one of those people who drive down 83 shooting ice bombs from the roof of my car. With the sun shining, it’s a sure bet that my sheet of ice would fly off at 65 miles an hour.  Plus, I am now half an hour late for church.  Really, why bother?

Back in the house I stomp.  Upstairs I march.  Off come the church clothes.  On go the sweats.  Well, at least I have an outfit ready for tomorrow.

These pictures were taken about six hours after the storm began.  We had six inches of snow at that point.  Now, as I am getting ready for bed, there are about ten inches.  I can no longer see any gray stone in the rock garden, and it is still snowing!  There will be a foot on the ground when I wake!

Thankfully, we have not lost power, and we do not necessarily have to drive anywhere tomorrow.  The temperatures by the middle of the week are expected to reach the mid-fifties, so this will soon be but a memory!  In the meantime, I feel like I should be baking Christmas cookies and singing carols, rather than carving Jack o’Lanterns and sewing costumes!