Hallowe'en/Samhain 2026

Last Saturday (31st October) it was Hallowe'en and Samhain. I celebrated by carving a pumpkin, putting up some decorations and making some food and drink. I baked gingerbread skeletons, made potato salad (based a recipe from the book The Kitchen Witch by Soraya) and also made my favourite Demon’s Blood drink (a recipe from The Real Witches' Kitchen by Kate West), which is ginger beer mixed with orange juice and apple juice, and dyed green. I had the potato salad and drink with some food from the supermarket. 

Here's a picture of the pumpkin:

 And here are a couple of the decorations:

My Hallowe'en altar!

 

Sorry the pics are a bit dark! :)

 

The gingerbread skeletons are one of my favourite recipes to make for Hallowe'en (an old one from Closer magazine). I don't think it's online but here's a similar one for Christmas gingerbread): https://www.flora.com/en-gb/flora/recipe/gingerbread-biscuits-183529

In recent years I used a different recipe but last year I went back to my usual one. As with last year, I made skeletons and a couple of "screaming" faces! lol. Here's a pic:

 

The legs of one of them broke off a bit but never mind! lol.

I'd planned to go to the park around sunset the day after Samhain (1st November) but the weather wasn't great, so I went the next day instead. I ended up getting there towards the later part of sunset but still got some nice pictures.

Here are a couple of photos: 

Sunset in Hove Park.

 

Autumn trees.

I also went to Burger King and got a latte, Coke and double bacon cheeseburger (the seem to have stopped doing mocha coffees, which is a shame!

So now we're in mid-late autumn (depending on whether you go by the meteorological or astronomical start of the season), although November tends to generally be considered late autumn. After a very hot summer, we've had more typical autumn temperatures. It's been quite cold lately, about 12C (53F) during the day and 6C (43F) at night. A little bit colder than this time last year. 

The next sabbat will be Yule/the Winter Solstice (21st December) which marks the "official" start of winter. I'll do a post about my celebrations.  

Hope you had a good Samhain/Hallowe'en! (Or hope you had a good Beltane if you're in the Southern Hemisphere!) :)