Tippity.

No, I haven't been overenjoying the spirits here at the S&P.

The word is not tipsy, but Tippity.

I'll explain.

I have been so busy that until this very moment I haven't had time to post about the finest thing to happen to our home this past Hallowe'en -- a gift from my Mama.

Early in the afternoon on October 31, while we were setting up Boo Corner and the animatronic figures, a UPS truck pulled up to the house, and the driver got out and brought me a big box. I take pride in remembering that as I accepted the box and signed that little electronic doohickey, the UPS guy was just gazing around at all our spooooky stuff, smiling like a kid. I invited him to come back with his kids after sundown. I don't know if he ever did (we had a lot of people!).

Anyway, I saw that it was sent from my mother, so I took the box inside the house, carefully opened it, and found this...

A little booklet, orange n' black ribbon-bound by my Mama.

Opening it, I discovered...

Aaahhh! How perfect!

Mom had put together a grand copy of Tippity Witchit's Hallowe'en, as it appeared in the famous and much-beloved series My Book House, first published in 1920. Mom read this to us when we were little, and not so little, and now she had given me a copy to read to my granddaughters.

Written by the book series' creator and editor, Olive Beaupre' Miller, the story also boasts some of the finest vintage Hallowe'en imagery from illustrator Matilda Breuer...

 This looks just like our Halli!

 Amazing.

Just amazing.

But much, much, much, much much more amazing was the other item in the box.

See, my mother, besides being a famous singer, is an artist. She is a craftswoman, a seamstress, a painter, a writer and thinker and philosopher, and a fantastic mother of many, many kids.

The woman creates, is what I'm trying to say.

And she loves painting and firing ceramics and porcelain.

And she loves Hallowe'en. 

And she apparently loves me, because she also took the above image and turned it into this...

Holy...!

Those ribbons are perfect, too!

And the mist sprites, bats, and jack o'lanterns, wow!

Just wow.

I absolutely love this piece, and I love that it came to be with us on Hallowe'en proper, and I had it carefully displayed in the livingroom all Hallowe'en long, bragging on it to anyone who looked upon it.

(By the way -- that ghost-pumpkin blanket you've seen in the background of so many pictures of cool things here at the S&P since we began? Yeah, she made that too).

This one-of-a-kind piece of Hallowe'en love is now hanging in a place of honor at the Skull & Pumpkin, where it will be displayed proudly and forever.

And like so many lucky Autumn People who were nurtured into being Autumn People by their Autumn Parents, I love my Mama very much.

Proudly and forever.