Happy Halloween!

Clare, Ida and I decided that we needed to celebrate Halloween, even though we were in Finland.  Clearly, this needed to involve costumes.  Also I have a bit of a pumpkin carving tradition that I’m trying to keep up, and since I hadn’t carved one at home before we left, I crossed my fingers and headed to the grocery store.  I was willing to settle for any variety of squash.  But squash doesn’t seem to be a common food in Finland.  Luckily, they were selling 5-euro tiny little pumpkins, which were called “halloween-somethinginfinnish”.  They had stickers on them to make them look like carved jack-o-lanterns, and what looked like instructions on the back of them, but they were real pumpkins, so I bought one despite the price.  There were a plethora of candle options to choose from, which we figured out is in preparation for “day of the dead”–a holiday where they put candles on the graves of their dead.  That happen’s next saturday, so we have another holiday to look forward to also! The pumpkin turned out to be a real pain to carve, so its not one of my finest pumpkin creations, but once it was lit, it did the trick.

We had fun coming up with costumes utilizing our materials at hand, and then we went trick-or-treating to the boys’  and Pepa’s cabins.  We even got candy at both stops!

Our Halloween celebration was completed by making and eating some doughnuts–our first real dessert of the trip!  With no oven, our homemade dessert options are pretty slim, but I think the doughnuts might have to be repeated.

Can you figure out what we all are?

Its definitely an imperfect snowflake--but I don't think any of us would be picky about our snowflakes right now!