Haunted House!

Well, sort of... 

Halloween is nearing, and we have spookified our house accordingly. This is particularly exciting for me, because it is the first time in my whole life that I have had Halloween decorations in my house! Back home in New Zealand we have Halloween, but most people don't really "do" much for it. Maybe a theme party, or perhaps a scary movie, but (at least, when I was growing up) kids didn't go trick-or-treating, we didn't really "decorate" or anything like that. Also, the little Halloween that we do have is exclusively "scary" or "paranormal". We don't have the American "anything goes" approach to costumes. I noticed when I was in the States for Halloween that kids could dress up as anything they wanted, be it a geisha girl, a princess, a block of cheese, a dice, whatever! Back home, dress up parties would have been "scary" costumes only, like Draculas, witches, ghosts, zombies, etc.

Aaaaanyway, I digress... we jazzed up the house a bit for Halloween, and I played with my new iPad app to make the photos look a little "spooky" haha.

First Picnic of the Season!

It's October now, and even though the UAE doesn't really have "seasons" as such, it still manages to cool off over the "winter" months a little. At the moment it's still reaching pretty hot temperatures during the day, but the mornings are definitely feeling cooler, and actually really nice for spending some time outside. The sun is also lower in the sky at 6:40, when we are heading off to work, so it glares right in the windshield, just at an angle that the sun visors don't really help... (sorry, irrelevant tangent...)

Today we made the most of the cooler morning air and headed to Green Mubazzara (a park) at the foot of Jebel Hafeet (a mountain). We planned ahead and picked up some good quality croissants from our local "french" bakery last night, so this morning it was simply a matter of packing up the cool box and driving out there! The weather was predictably sunny and clear, but it was nice and cool (low-mid 30s C), and best of all it was Friday morning, so basically nobody else was out and about. We almost had the whole park to ourselves.

 

 We set up in our usual spot, in the shade of one of the many date palms. I say "usual", but we hadn't been out for a picnic since March, haha. There was a little stream nearby with crystal-clear water.

 

There were various different pretty birds nearby, and the grass was nice and cool. We had cold deli meats, croissants, fruit, dates (ok, they are fruit, too!), juice and Liz's Southern Living magazine. It was funny being out enjoying OUR version of autumn weather (like US summer!) and reading all the yummy autumn-themed recipes from the US magazine, and seeing the pictures of what Autumn is like in regular four-seasons countries. I miss the seasons.

It was a good picnic. So nice to be able to get outside again now that the weather is cooling off (at least in the mornings).

 

two white-eared bulbuls chatting in a nearby date palm.