Halloween Fail

I could be more positive and call this post:
"My First Attempt At Decorating For Fall"

But it was a failure in the worst possible sense.

Last week, I decided it was time to deck the halls for Halloween. Yes, I love Halloween. (And Jesus. Just in case you were wondering.)

I love love love decorating this time of year. I never felt my Fall decor was inferior before. Before the internet.
Thanks, Pinterest.
Have you seen them?
The handmade banners? The monogrammed pumpkins? The costumed kids sipping homemade cider? The lighted leaf garlands? The twinkling sparkly orange explosion of all things Halloweeny and Fall?
If Martha Stewart ever made you feel inadequate, then Pinterst will make you jump off your roof.

I should have just stopped looking, because when I pulled out my plastic plug-in pumpkins, the scarecrow with one leg, and raggedy dollar store garland... it got ugly.
I don't mean "ugly" in the sense of looking bad. I mean "ugly" like "I am throwing a grown-up temper tantrum on my front porch" ugly.

The boy was in charge of the lights in the bushes, and every time he got the cords just so, the neighborhood cat menagerie would tear through and pull it down. He was barefoot, and a swarm of mosquitoes decided to eat his feet.
While he was jumping up and down cursing at the bugs, the light cord and the cats, I was hanging decor on the front door. (I don't really think he said actual bad words. He probably just thought them. Like his momma.)

I was unwinding my twinkly orange lights and lush leaf foliage and trying to staple them up over the door. Every time I stapled, the force of the staple CUT the leaf garland. All I was doing was chopping up leaf garland into segments.
When I tried to attach the lights with the stapler, it started chopping up my light strand, too.
(Those light strands may work if one bulb is out, but they do not work in pieces.)
So I climbed down and found some tiny hooks to hold the lights. After what felt like HOURS of twisting and hanging, I managed to get the lights up and stepped back to admire my work.
The home we are renting has a beautiful glass door. It weighs 3 tons and slams with the force of a meteor hitting Earth. Not exaggerating.
Like a scene out of a horror movie, the door (which had been propped open) decided to close and take the corner of the light strand with it.
The 3 ton door shut hard, shattering 78 tiny bulbs at once, and a hail shower of orange glass rained down upon me.

I calmly walked into the garage, put on my shoes (because all great decorators do their work barefoot) and grabbed a giant black trash bag. I ripped down all the lights and picked up all the leaf garland segments and threw them in the bag.
I cleaned up the glass, cut my thumb on a shard, and vowed to never decorate for Halloween again.
My mosquito-bitten assistant had abandoned me at this point.
In a rage, I grabbed a plastic pumpkin and plugged it in. I was determined... We were AT LEAST gonna have one decoration.
Well, no.
We weren't.
The bulb in Mr. Plastic Pumpkin was burned out.

It took every bit of self-control I possess to NOT drop-kick that pumpkin and his grinning un-lit self across the street.

I just left him there on the porch.
I went inside, and I think I may have declared that God doesn't want us to decorate for Halloween.

I may try again, so stay tuned.
Or I may wait until Christmas, pull out my staple gun, and chop up some evergreen garland.