In Search of Halloween Style

Some clever neighbors blended the frivolous with the useful by carving their house number into one of their pumpkins. / MyLittleBird photo.

An artist neighbor revealed the character inside this pumpkin. Displayed on a brick pillar right next to a city sidewalk, it lasted only one night . . .

. . . to be replaced a day or two later by this somehow less-friendly fellow. / MyLittleBird photo.

Abundance is clearly the theme of this display. The squash and gourds are in a protected doorway in front of the big double doors (the display does not block the door). / MyLittleBird photo.

Pale pumpkins and gourds line the front steps of a 19th-century brick mansion. / MyLittleBird photo.

The red-veined pumpkin on the left is a hybrid known as the “One Too Many” pumpkin, because it looks as though it’s been filled to bursting. / MyLittleBird photo.

On the other side of the mummy doorway, the spiders in the “rigging” of this spider web were fashioned from paint and water bottles. / MyLittleBird photo.

The whimsy here appealed to us, with a witch’s hat on each cast-iron newel post. / MyLittleBird photo.

And, to the right of the witches’ hats, these glittery spiders made a home on a boxwood. / MyLittleBird photo.

This freestanding fortune teller makes her home on the sidewalk outside a house in Georgetown. But there’s more to come . . .

Beyond the fortune teller, an ambitious Georgetown real estate agent has turned her family’s abode into the “Nightmare in Georgetown.” Good for business? One would think not! / MyLittleBird photo.

Ghosts surround a pumpkin tree at the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. / Photo © Bryan Haeffele

A T-Rex dinosaur featured at the Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. / Photo © Tom Nycz

The Tunnel O’ Pumpkin Love is a popular photo op at the Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. / Photo © Bryan Haeffele

Editor’s note: If you find a house decorated in really cool Halloween or just fall fashion, email them to nancy@mylittlebird.com so we can add them to the photo gallery.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that it might be fun, even instructive, to find a few examples of tasteful Halloween decorations, being that so many houses are totally tarted up seven to 10 days before the event. And I did find some displays that were attractive, that didn’t make the center-hall Colonial behind them into something akin to a department store or a magic shop.

But as I looked through the images I took, the truth revealed itself: There are ways to welcome autumn with natural displays and with restraint, but when it comes to Halloween, well, there are clever decorations around and funny ones and even inventive new ones. But I don’t think any of them were what Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr. had in mind when they published “The Decoration of Houses,” back in 1897.

Be that as it may, looking around town is still a lot of fun at this time of year, as these pictures show.

If this isn’t enough for your Halloween-lovin’ soul, take a gander at the goings-on at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The 2014 Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze–with some 5,000 carved pumpkins, including, in this 10th-anniversary year, tumbling-acrobat pumpkins (I guess we’ll have to see that to understand) arranged in tableaux over the grounds of the Hudson River Valley estate.

Lest the style-conscious among us cringe nervously, relax, knowing that Martha Stewart has featured the Blaze on her YouTube channel. For more info, go to the very entertaining FAQs on the Blaze site. But hurry to buy tickets: There are only a few nights in November that are not sold out as of this writing.

No chance of attending, and little skill at carving your own? The Blaze artistes have included a printable template for a reasonably scary pumpkin character right on their site.

–Nancy McKeon