Halloween Pumpkins

Halloween – how are we feeling about it? I love how excited the children get (before they have gathered buckets full of sweets and chocolate) and I really feel like it signals the beginning of winter, right after the clocks go back. Time to embrace the season. We’ve been so lucky this year already with crisp autumnal days, first frosts and a few welly walks. 

I know it’s a big money-generating import from the US but there is a serious fun element to it – fancy dress, enormous amounts of sugar, getting together with your mates to cause mayhem, pumpkin carving… what’s not to love? And if you are that way inclined, the grown-ups get involved too! 

OK, so the whole candy thing definitely came from our friends over the pond, but I loved reading a recent article about the folklore of Halloween from the National Trust. I was really interested to read how far back some of this goes – way back through the centuries, this really is THE festival of the season (apart from Harvest Festival perhaps). Whether it’s stories of the dead, undead or ghostly beasts, it’s the time of year for story-telling, crackling fires and homeliness. I also loved reading that perhaps even the “Trick or Treating” tradition could even go back to medieval times. Who knew?! You can read the article here. And while you’re there you might get some inspiration for some crisp welly walks from the National Trust, I found a link to their Autumn Walks here. 

Travelling in Central America, I was fascinated by the whole Day of the Dead thing there too and you can see its influence in the current Original Welly Boot collection where there are a number of designs with Mexican-inspired designs.

At ThisisNessie, we find it’s also time people start thinking about Christmas (I know!). There’s always the first flutter of Christmas cards which get ordered, and people start enquiring about how they can design their goodies.

This year is so exciting, we have a brand new website, a new Make Your Own Range, and we are literally just about to launch a new way to design your gifts from over 10,000 illustrations! Keep watching our posts for news on this one!

“We’ve been so lucky this year already with crisp autumnal days, first frosts and a few welly walks. ”
nessie