An ode to childhood wonder, peculiar little friends, and the magic of making believe.
Before I made the cookies, I made the world they would live in.
Well, first I dreamed it.
I dreamed of an old-fashioned Halloween. The sort found in faded picture books, vintage paper dolls, and childhood afternoons when an entire world could be made from a cardboard box, a few scraps of paper, and a rather extraordinary imagination.
Do you remember those days?
When we could disappear into our own little worlds for hours? When the smallest things became treasures, when make-believe was a perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon, and when we believed, quite wholeheartedly, that magic was everywhere?
Oh, how I love those days.
And how I wish we didn’t feel the need to leave them behind when we grow up.
I suppose that’s where A Little Halloween began.
With a handful of drawings and a rather peculiar gathering of friends.
There was Clementine, who had been planning Halloween since August. Walter, whose excitement occasionally caused his bones to rattle right out of place. Milton, forever tangled in his own bandages. And Rupert, a vampire from a long and distinguished family, who was unfortunately terrified of bats.
Then came Pip, Mable, Winifred, Otis, and Fig.
Each with their own little personalities, peculiar habits, and stories to tell.
And somewhere along the way, they became rather real to me.
And perhaps that’s because, in their own peculiar ways, they were all a little bit of me.
Bits of my personality, my ridiculous little quirks, the things I love, the things I don’t particularly care for, and the funny contradictions that make us who we are.
A little of my enthusiasm in Walter. My love of collecting beautiful, forgotten things in Pip. My tendency to fuss over the smallest details in Clementine. And perhaps a bit of my own nonsense in Otis, who keeps trying his magic trick even though it has never once worked.
I suppose when you spend enough time dreaming up imaginary friends, you can’t help but give them little pieces of yourself.
And I rather love that.
Because hidden beneath all that royal icing and those silly little stories were tiny pieces of my own heart.
Perhaps that’s why I grew so terribly fond of them.
Naturally, they needed a home.
And so I decided to build them one.
Not just any house, mind you. A little gingerbread house with wallpapered rooms, painted floors, tiny rugs, a starry attic, and a front door through which our friends might come and go.
I painted and measured and cut and glued. I made tiny decorations and fussed over wallpaper. I spent hours on details that might never be noticed by anyone else.
And I was absolutely delighted.
Because this is the part I love most.
The making.
The dreaming.
The ridiculous joy of creating something simply because you can imagine it.
When Real Life Comes Knocking
But while this little world was coming together, life outside of it became unexpectedly difficult.
Our family was hurting. Not from one single thing, but from several difficult things arriving all at once. There were heavy conversations, unexpected circumstances, and hearts that needed tending.
We were each carrying our own sorrows while trying to be strong enough to hold one another’s.
And as a mother, there are moments when everything else must become very small because the people you love need so much of you.
This was one of those moments.
The little Halloween collection was in full swing. The characters had names and stories. The house was taking shape. I had plans and timelines and a head absolutely bursting with ideas.
And then I needed to put it all down.
There wasn’t room in those days for dreaming up little Halloween parties. There were real people who needed me, real hurts that couldn’t be fixed with royal icing and a paintbrush.
And I wanted to be there. Fully there.
But I would be telling only half the story if I pretended there wasn’t also a little sadness in setting aside something that had been bringing me so much joy.
I think sometimes we forget that we can love our people fiercely, give ourselves wholeheartedly to caring for them, and still miss the parts of ourselves that have had to grow quiet for a while.
And then, as though the little gingerbread house had been listening to all this commotion, it decided to join in.
It came crashing down.
Quite literally.
The walls gave way, the carefully constructed rooms collapsed, and hours upon hours of work lay in pieces.
I remember looking at that little heap of broken gingerbread and thinking that it seemed an awfully fitting picture of life just then.
And for a while, I simply couldn’t bring myself to begin again.
Finding My Way Back to Making
I’ve been thinking about that little house quite a lot.
About how sometimes we build beautiful things and sometimes they fall apart. How life can change so suddenly, without asking whether we’ve finished what we were doing.
And how, in the middle of caring for everyone and everything around us, it can be terribly easy to forget that our own hearts need tending, too.
Twelve years ago, when I first began baking from my home, it was born out of necessity.
I needed an income. I needed flexibility. I needed to be home with five small children and available for the responsibilities of caregiving.
It was a practical decision in a life that required a great deal of practicality.
But something unexpected happened.
As the business grew, so did a little piece of me.
Baking became a place where I could dream and play and create beauty in the midst of things that were sometimes terribly hard.
It brought people into my life I might never have known. It gave me friendships and community. It gave me something that was mine to nurture, even while so much of my life was devoted to nurturing others.
And I began to understand that making beautiful things wasn’t simply a luxury I enjoyed when everything else was taken care of.
It was one of the ways I cared for myself.
One of the ways I remembered who I was.
And here I am, all these years later, still learning that lesson.
I don’t believe we always need to turn our difficulties into something beautiful. Some things are simply hard, and we are allowed to say so.
But I do believe there is something wonderful about finding small pockets of joy in the middle of them.
About giving ourselves permission to play, even when life feels serious.
About allowing our imaginations to wander somewhere lovely for a little while.
And so, eventually, I gathered the broken pieces of our little Halloween house.
I made a new plan.
And I began again.
The Party Must Go On
The walls went back up. The wallpaper returned. The rooms filled with tiny treasures. Our peculiar friends moved in, and the party preparations resumed.
Pip hung the decorations. Clementine made sure everything was just so. Otis practiced his magic trick, which still didn’t work.
And the little world I had dreamed of finally came to life.
There were cookies and candlelight, flowers and old dishes, tiny handwritten labels and stories tucked into boxes.
And then came one of my very favorite parts.
Sending them out into the world.
Each little character was tucked into a box with an introduction, and alongside them went a small story of the Halloween gathering at Partridge Place.
Because I didn’t want to send someone a box of beautiful cookies and leave the story behind.
I wanted them to know who they were meeting. To discover that Rupert was terribly afraid of bats, that Mable had never managed to frighten anyone, and that Otis had been practicing the same unsuccessful magic trick for seven years.
I wanted them to laugh. To imagine. To feel, even for a moment, that these peculiar little friends had arrived from somewhere quite extraordinary.
And perhaps they might set them around a table, tell their stories to someone they love, or make up entirely new adventures of their own.
Oh, how I love imagining that.
Because making magic was always the point.
Not the kind that requires a wand or a spell, but the sort we make for one another.
The magic of a little surprise. Of laughter shared around a table. Of discovering something delightful and unexpected in an otherwise ordinary day.
I spent weeks making a tiny world for these characters to live in, but the loveliest part was knowing that eventually they would leave it.
That something dreamed up in my imagination, made with my own two hands, and carrying little pieces of my heart, might find its way into someone else’s home.
And perhaps, just perhaps, become part of a memory they would keep.
What a wonderful privilege it is to make things.
And what an even more wonderful thing it is to share them.
Until Next Halloween
And now Halloween has come, the candles have burned low, and our peculiar little friends have wandered off to their new homes.
I wonder where they are now.
Perhaps Walter is sitting beside a pumpkin on someone’s table. Perhaps Mable has made a new friend. I do hope someone has applauded Otis.
And Fig? Well, I suspect she’s made herself comfortable somewhere and has absolutely no intention of leaving.
The little house is quiet again.
But I suspect a bit of its magic will linger.
Perhaps in the scraps of painted paper still scattered across my worktable. In the photographs. In the memories of those late nights spent making tiny, unnecessary, wonderful things.
And perhaps in the reminder that growing up doesn’t mean we must stop playing.
That imagination is not something we outgrow.
That there is still so much magic to be found in this ordinary, beautiful, imperfect life.
If only we make a little room for it.
A little Halloween, made for mischief, merriment, and making memories.
With a little wonder,
Melissa