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Cornucopia with Jack O lantern
Activities for the Fall Harvest Season – Speech
Our 5 to 7 minute contribution to the Hilarity Harvest No-Contest Toastmaster affair back in October 30, 2018.
For this speech, we researched to find a few of the more common activities people partake in the fall/Halloween season.
Then we envisioned ourself partaking in such activities as an out of shape senior and grandmother of adult grandchildren. We haven’t had to celebrate Halloween in over 25 years! What would we do with this list of fun activities? What wouldn’t we or couldn’t we do as an elder?
We’ve provided notes and images for your enjoyment, and if you can manage to make a speech from any of this we’d love to know how it turns out.
Activities for the fall include:
- Shopping
- Fall treats, apples, pumpkins
- Sports Galore
- Corn Mazes
- Hay and Balloon rides
- Costumes
- Bonfires
- Trick or Treat Candy
- Raking and playing in Leaves
Shopping
Fall first hits when you walk into your store and get blasted by Cinnamon spice and everything nice. Fall is cinnamon brooms that serve no purpose other than annoy the sinuses.
And once familiar foods now everything pumpkin.
Dog biscuits, Cereals, Butters, Tea, Coffee, Sauces, Cheese, Pancakes and Waffles, Popcorn, Dish soap, Household cleaners, Cosmetics and Body washes.
When we were young, the fall season meant pumpkin pie.
The day after Xmas meant waiting 10 months till mom baked another pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie meant fall was here. None of this new stuff matters. Just give us a pumpkin pie.
Pick apples. How many pecks of apples can Johnny Appleseed pick? Travel an hour or two to pick a peck of apples (about 32) or splurge for a bushel (125) and spend $$80 bucks, or swing by Trader Joes to pick up a bag, enough for one decent pie for $5.
Candy apples. Who was the first person to decide natures perfect fruit needs to be dipped in 10,000 calories, handed to children about to embark on a Trick or Treat quest to bring 80,000 more calories to their diet?
Take the world’s healthiest food and make caramel apples. An excuse to eat 10K calorie while convincing self it’s healthy because it’s an apple after all. Set the stage for Halloween, feed to the kiddies before sending them out to gather 80K more calories to add to their already sugary diets.
Sports
Tail gate party. Hang out with friends in a cold stadium parking lot, watch the game on a big screen TV mounted in the bed of a pick-up-truck. Consume triglycerides cooked over the tail gate barbecue. Drink beer. Freeze butt off. Maybe if I was 20…
Hay Rides and Horses
A hay ride might be nice as long as they have some sort of hydraulic lift or crane to plunk us on the pile so I don’t roll off at the first good bump.
We’d love to ride a horse again but these days just feel sorry for the horse. Wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because we’d be apologizing to the horse. “It’s not that much farther, sorry, sorry, so sorry.”
Corn Mazes
Corn mazes for dating couples and 7 year olds. The last thing we want to do is wander aimlessly among hysterical strangers who can’t find their way out of a patch of 8 foot corn stalks.
If the kids were young we’d find the bench nearest “Go. Fend for yourselves, if you’re in there more than 24 hours we’ll call for help, watch for rats and don’t talk to strangers. That ought to keep em busy.
Hot Air Balloon
Take a hot air balloon ride. Ok with us as long as the thing stays firmly moored to the ground.
Costumes
Made our own costumes out of whatever was available. Remember those days? We’d be lucky if Mom and Dad bought a mask! Who says ghosts can’t be fashionable be they polka dotted or striped?
Decorate for Halloween
Plant headstones in the yard, hang spiders and cobwebs. Plan scary surprises. Bring out the skeletons and gruesome ghouls. Terrorize the beegeebes out of little children to the delight of their parents, then give them candy.
We live in an old people hood. We’ve had only 3 Trick or Treaters in 25 years. We we have forgotten what children look like.
Family reunion:
We’ve been avoiding these people for a decade, why do we want them in our house all at once?
October-fest
October-fest is right around the corner…we could have a combined celebration/reunion. Break out the beer steins and accordions and let’s party.
Build a Bonfire, Celebrate
the annual “Burn the Witches” ceremony. toss in a few firecrackers for good measure.
Have Fun with leaves
Or we can slow things down and just watch leaves. Some travel to see fall colors.
If leaves don’t change where you live paint leaves red, gold, green and brown
Gather leaves for table decorations and wreaths. Put them in glass bowls for display.
Wait till a blanket of leaves and walk through them, run through them, or slide. In fact we did all three on my way to make this speech.
Gather leaves and throw them at your friends and passers by. They’ll love it we promise.
Rake leaves into designs like mazes and labyrinths.
Rake em into a pile and jump into the leaves. Once. Shower, change clothes, admonish the dog, blow the rest into the compost bin.
Scary Movies
We plan to do to what we always do in the fall. Sit by the fire as much as possible in our comfy chair and watch 100 of our favorite Halloween scary movies.
Here is the Mind-map for our Hilarity Harvest speech – including links to color book pages for the kiddies.
Mind map halloween harvest
