Spooky Twist Halloween Table Topper from the Holiday Celebrations Book
Learn how to create a “not so spooky” Halloween Table topper with the Spooky Twist Halloween table topper pattern in the Holiday Celebrations Book!
Who’s ready for another Halloween in June project!? Pat Sloan asked if I would be willing to check out an advanced copy of her new book Holiday Celebrations. I love Pat and was happy to participate.
The timing seemed perfect since I just released a Halloween fabric collection. As I glanced through the book, I knew immediately that I’d like to create one of the projects in the book using my Spooky Hollow collection. I love to sew Halloween quilts and thought it would be fun to add a table topper to my collection.
I created a “not so spooky” Halloween table topper using the Spooky Twist pattern that is in the book.
Table Topper Details
The quilted table topper comprises 9 quilt blocks that, when sewn together, create a cool “twist” effect.
The blocks are simple to piece; this project would be great for an advanced beginner quilter to above. But, first, you need to create several Half Square Triangle quilt blocks. I was able to sit down one afternoon last week and quickly whip up the table topper.
Our Halloween Dinner Parties!
Every year for Halloween, I set my dining room table for a Halloween-themed dinner party. I set the table at the beginning of October and leave it up all month. Then most years, we end it with either a family or friend party in the dining room.
We got the idea one year at the Mall when my twins were preschoolers. A local furniture store had their dining room table set up with skeletons and mummies sitting in the seats. My son was very impressed and asked me every day after that to “go to the store where the monsters are having a meeting.”
Ever since then, we’ve set up our dining room for a “spooky meeting.” Now that my kids are gone, we still do it every year. It’s one of my favorite traditions. Yes, I know it’s a little weird, but as I said, we love it!
I plan to use this table topper on my dining room table now. I created it in black and gray to match our dining room setup.
Where to Buy the Book
You can find the book in many of your favorite shops and on Amazon.
Book & Prize Giveaway
Pat has generously offered to give away a hard copy of the book to one reader. To enter, just let me know what your favorite “offbeat” family Holiday tradition is! (comments are moderated, don’t worry if you don’t see yours pop up right away, it’s in there!)
The Giveaway open until 6/15/21. Non-US residents can win a digital copy of the book.
THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THE WINNER HAS BEEN NOTIFIED.
Pat also has a BIG prize pack that she’s giving away on her blog. Stop by to find out how to enter.
You can also enter on Instagram, just visit Pat’s IG page for details.
I decorate the entire house for Halloween. I’m the only one on our street to decorate, and that’s ok with me!
I guess I’m pretty boring because I don’t have an offbeat holiday tradition
Our favorite holiday tradition is to play board games on Christmas Eve and eat finger food. It’s not wacky but we love it.
Family traditions took a hit this last year. Our new tradition is monthly conference phone calls. Yes I know it doesn’t have a holiday attached, but in an effort to bridge the shut down and social distancing we have found it to be a wonderful reconnection time. Sharing family stories, catching up with busy lives and sharing troubles and worries is therapeutic. That’s worth celebrating and hopefully we can start doing it in person very soon.
Hello Melissa, loving those colors in the new collection, gorgeous. Look great in Pat’s pattern! Not sure if others do this too, but when we hang and fill Christmas stockings, our pets each get one too!
Taking a walk after the meal to get out of doing dishes
For Halloween kids all dress up, and then meet at Great grandmas to decorate cookies, we do this for Christmas too, at Christmas it might be decorating a ginger bread house
A tradition that seems odd to some was that we always watched the movie Bambi at my dad’s house on Christmas from the time my kids were very small. I still remember them crying when they were little and questioning Dad’s choice. Now, as adults, the kids all remember their grandpa fondly because of it.
Off-beat family tradition, hmmm… That would be grandpa’s fishing spot. Every year the families would gather at 5 a.m. on Memorial Day and travel a short distance to join the grandparents at grandpa’s favorite lucky fishing spot. We would be there til about 2 p.m.. Picnicking, laughing, swapping stories, listening to the grownups share memories of those no longer with us. Not much fishing was actually done but ALL had a great time! This was around 50 years ago. Sadly, few of those family members are still living, and sadder still the fishing area and the little lake are now private property vacation homes , , , but the memories of those gatherings is still precious.
I’m not sure it’s a tradition but one year we went to the beach for thanksgiving. It was just my husband and me and we were in a small rental that had a tiny kitchen so we did not have the usual feast. But thankful to be together and doing something different.
I don’t remember ever having a certain holiday decoration. Ours was with food. Chili on Halloween night before heading out for treats. My daughter now does the same with her kids.
I don’t have any offbeat celebrations. Although I do have a tradition. Every year for my grandson’s birthday, we go to the beach at the same hotel. When we give our name, we are always given the same room. From the hotel balcony, we can see the horses come in that offer rides for the day. My grandson gets so excited watching the riders, experienced and first timers. Quite a hilarious time!
I am not sure how off beat this is, but one of my traditions that I love is driving around looking at the Halloween decorations. Which seems to be increasing year by year.
I would love to win Pat’s book. And I love the fabrics that you used to make the Halloween Table Topper.
We don’t have any offbeat traditions, but one of our favorite things to do when our kids were little was to help them decorate their bikes so they could participate in the Fourth of July children’s parade. After the big parade was finished, the day was spent with friends, culminating in fireworks at night.
I love all the holidays and I am anxious to start one or more of the projects in this book. I love to put out all my bunnies for spring and Easter!
As we grow older and have no family living near, we celebrate all holidays minimally. Minimal decorations…minimal parties….minimal gifts. That is just fine with us. Life is simple and stress free
Do not have any quirky things we do for holidays. Just eat and enjoy each others company.
Would love to win this book!
I love your idea of setting up the dining room. My 92 yo mom is sleeping in ours right now (closest to the downstairs bathroom as she can’t do stairs). No weird holiday traditions here. My mom is English so we always had English crackers at Xmas. We’d pop them, put on the crown and read the joke. Lots of great family photos of laughing adults and kids wearing crowns.
When I was younger we did a treasure hunt with hidden clues in eggs for easter. Sometimes it took all day long to find our baskets.
Not sure we have an offbeat tradition but we get together for everything. Love that my kids want to get together so often. It might be a holiday or birthday or just because.
I love anything Halloween so will definitely make some of these projects in spooky fabrics
4th of July birthday cake
I can’t think of any off beat holiday traditions but I do like making holiday table runners and toppers. Pat’s book has some great patterns I’d love to try making.
At family gatherings my grandfather would share family movies and then rerun them backwards.
I don’t have any real offset holiday traditions! Unless you count not having a celebration on the traditional day! Since I worked and was on call many holidays we often just fit our celebrations in when we had an opportunity! Now that I’m retired I’m enjoying putting holiday decorations or at least quilt projects out !
Due to our nieces having great family- oriented entertaining spaces, we spend major holidays away from home. This is not a planned tradition, but it works for us. It so much less stressful for us and they enjoy hosting. Win-Win!
Our offbeat holiday consists of putting a plastic toy vintage Godzilla on the Easter centerpiece. He sports peeps in each hand, under his foot and with peeps in his mouth. Love Godzilla; not so much peeps.
In our family, we celebrate birthdays for the whole month, not just the day. It was a fun way to have several surprises to make the person feel extra special!
What a devilish idea to set up a table for a Spooky Halloween Meeting/Dinner! I think you win the prize for the best ”off beat” idea for celebrating Halloween. Since Halloween has not been celebrated by us except for costumes for the girls when they were young and handing out treats for those who come to our door, our decorations are minimal. i do have several table toppers and an appliqué Halloween banner on the front door that I made on my embroidery machine. I also made a pair of witches’ legs and feet using an embroidery pattern from Embroidery Library that I place sticking up out of my bowl of candy so it looks like the witch dove into the candy, head first. That is pretty much the extent of our decorating. I love the table topper you made from Pat Sloan’s new Holiday Celebrations book using your new fabric line. It will fit in perfectly with your Spooky Halloween dinner/meeting table setting! Maybe it’s time for me to make something new to update our Halloween decorations this year. Thanks for sharing your talents and promoting Pat’s new book.
Don’t know if this qualifies as “off beat” but I decorate with mostly red hearts
at Christmas. Ornaments, quilts, trees made from dowels hung with small
hearts — and some are left out until Valentine’s day and some not.
Don’t really have an “offbeat” holiday we celebrate. Love your version of Pat’s Spooky Twist!
We really don’t have any offbeat holiday traditions. I guess we love them just the way they are.
I don’t know if it quirky anymore, but my daughter has 3 Christmas trees in the living and dining room She working on getting them in all of her bedrooms and even the kitchen and bathrooms.
The offbeat holiday tradition is the first person to say “Christmas Eve Gift” on Christmas Eve gets to open a gift on Christmas Eve!
THE Last several years one of our traditions is to watch our grandkids open presents over FACETIME as they live overseas.
watching the annual football competition between rival teams with my son in law. Oye. “good game” is always exchanged at the end.
Our offbeat holiday is the first day of “buck” season.. The men go hunting and the women shop the day away! We all get together afterwards but don’t discuss our “bounty” Could be lots of fabric? LOL
I love Pat Sloan and her new book is fabulous. Our family favourite “offbeat” Holiday tradition is to open all the stockings first, then one person opens a present at our house one at a time! We started to wrap things together and try to limit the wrapping because some times gift opening would take up half the day. LOL. We are all grateful for gift cards! I love your Halloween Tablescape. My grandson absolutely loves Halloween and it is his favourite season. He has been building a collection of spooky yard decor for a long time. I will share this idea with him, hope you don’t mind.
When the kids were younger I went all out for Halloween – a boom box with spooky sounds like chains rattling and ghosts moaning blaring out the front window, lots of Jack o lanterns, orange and purple lights out front, spooky scarecrows in recliners on the lawn – and of course the dog and I dressed up to hand out candy! Fun times!
We watch the original Star Wars trilogy at Christmas.
We always have fried oatmeal on Christmas morning!
I put up my three foot Christmas tree October decorated all Halloween then change decorations November first to thanksgiving. Love to decorate for fall.
I guess my Easter tradition for my 2 grandkids when they were young was to give them new bathing suits & fun beach towels for the summer in their Easter basket since I knew they would be getting way too much candy. Of course I added some candy!
Our offbeat celebration is the “first day of buck”(start of hunting season) The men go hunting and the ladies go shopping. At the end of the day we all get together for some dinner and converation, but not necessarily to compare our harvests. Women might have too much fabric to reveal! LOL
When I was a kid we would pick up my grandpa from the nursing home and drive around looking at Christmas lights with him. I think of those days every time that I take my boys to look at the lights. 💙
We take hot cocoa with us usually.
I can’t say that we have any “offbeat” family traditions. We pretty much stick to keeping the same traditions every year because my younger son gets distressed if I try to change anything.
My family celebrates New Year’s Day with a party ever since I could remember. No theme, no fancy food or decorations. Lots of appetizers and pot luck and leftover holiday cookies. It’s the perfect way to bring in the New Year!
Our off-beat family celebration involves shooting bottle rockets (fireworks) into the pond on the 4th of July. The underwater explosion is silent but visible. No fish are harmed.
On Halloween we always have chili and hot dogs for dinner and before trick or treating. We still do this every year with some of our grandkidsl.
My SIL is an MD & wears full suit/tie of holiday fabrics for many of the holidays, a tradition he started for his birthday, St Patrick’s Day. His patients love it & all want selfies with him!!
I don’t have any particular holiday traditions/decorations that I follow today. When my kids were younger, we’d decorate for all the different holudays, now it’s pretty much just Christmas.
Our family does not have any offbeat traditions. Just have impromptu gatherings occasionally when least expected.
It’s not quirky but it’s also not traditional Christmas food. We have homemade spaghetti and meatballs on the time when we open presents, I’m 71 years old and I can’t remember a time when my family did this.
Our family does this…my husband, our sons and their families including grandchildren and great grandchildren.
The guys in my family have a “turkey trot” foot race every Thanksgiving to burn off some of those excess calories!
Since I retired I host a Halloween BOOfet 👻 with lots of gruesome foods 🎃 The grandkids & great grandkids love it!
We don’t have any kids. So we were always the house that was over decorated for every holiday because we had extras time parents didn’t have. Halloween, in particular, was a full blown event with whimsical decorations so the little kids weren’t afraid to come to the house. A Harry Potter room with candles floating in the air, potions ingredients set up and a book shelf of mystical books. The dinning room with ghosts at the table. All holidays get some special treatment in our home. It makes me happy to see those who visit smile and delight in what’s around them.
I decorate a small table with runner and home grown pumpkins.
By “off-beat” I’m guessing you mean a bit unusual? Around Halloween we have cockroach will travel. Our cockroach is plastic about 2 1/2″ long. He shows up in the strangest places, like folded inside your napkin at the table or falling out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Sure does put everyone opening things carefully!
I’m new to your site and enjoying all the things you make.
The kids always have birthday cake for breakfast on their birthday. So fun!
Love your decorating idea. A Halloween tradition for us is to take the kids, now grandchild, around the neighbourhood, then head into town, order something takeout, then park up on a hill to watch the fireworks. Spectacular !!
Offbeat, you decide? We have angel food cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas morning (before opening gifts). We’ve been doing it for 50 years or so…
I like the twist pattern in blacks, grays, and whites. Just what the nephew ordered! Thanks.
Our offbeat holiday tradition is watching Annabell’s Wish, a movie about a cow that wants to be a reindeer. I made a quilt with the Deer Christmas line from Urban Chixs and my daugher cried, “Annabell!” when she saw the backing was the Deer Panel. I love your Halloween Table Runner! Thanks for participating in the book tour!
Don’t really have an offbeat tradition, but my father-in-law does put on an scary old-man mask to try and scare us on Halloween. One year my son surprised me by dressing up as a clown to scare me because he knows I don’t like clowns.
I buy an extra turkey every Thanksgiving for my freezer and we have a Thanksgiving in April celebration.
Off beat tradition? I guess like others I don’t have any off beat ones although I do have 5 Christmas Trees every year – 4 are minis that I decorate with a collection of mini decorations that I have collected over the years. .
It’s just me now. So put out some decorations to entertain my self.
I guess my off beat holiday month June. My grandma made my mother a quilt when she was 13. It was pink and bonnet Sue quilt. However, she never put the binding on and my mother just kept in a drawer. When I started quilting 15years ago my mom decided to give the quilt to me. I tried very hard to find 1930s muslin but ended up just big it with today’s muslin. So I hang itup in my living room in remembrance of my mom and grandma.
I love celebrating and decorating for all the holidays. Don’t know if we do anything quirky, but we sure have a lot of fun. When our boys were growing up we always cut our own trees down and decorated it all together. Very special!
What a fun tradition you have – I don’t think it’s weird at all! I don’t have anything “weird” but my favorite tradition started about 9 years ago when my youngest grandbaby was only 2 (I have 7 grandbabies, now aged 11-23!) They wanted to have a “pollyanna” gifting and decided to make gifts for their person. It’s continued all these years and now includes the older kids’ boyfriends & girlfriends! I so look forward to see the great individualized ideas they make for each other. Thanks so much for the chance to win! 🙂
We always have Thanksgiving dinner at half-time for the Dallas Cowboys football game. I’m sure we’re not the only ones, haha.
I guess I’m pretty traditional but my daughter’s favorite holiday is May 1st – that’s the day she can go hunting for antlers that animals have shed. She lives in Wyoming.
No quirky traditions here now that I am alone. I still like to sew holiday decorations and decorate my house, especially at Christmas.
Our holiday tradition is to play Scrabble.
Your table topper is lovely and your Halloween story was so cute. I’ve tried to think of an “offbeat” tradition that we have but nothing comes to mind. It’s just my husband and I, so most of the family traditions from my childhood are long gone. I do try to decorate a little for holidays and Pat’s book has some really cute small projects.
Out Christmas celebrations with the family are held on 27 December which is also my husband’s birthday so we combine the two and my husband gets double the presents!
I started what seems to be becoming a new Christmas tradition in our family with grown kids (no grandkids yet). I pulled together about 8-10 Christmas themed games for the family to play and last year I added prizes. I laid the prizes out on a table and each winner got to select a prize of their choice. It’s like being at a 3rd grade birthday party but everyone loved it! I think it will be a tradition from now on.
I love decorating for Halloween! The table topper you made with Pat’s book and your new fabric is really cute!
We always make extra food. Then after eating everyone makes “to go” containers and no one has to cook the next day (or two).
My offbeat tradition at Halloween is to watch on old black and white movie- ‘” Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein”. As kids we loved watching that movie and it brings back fond memories of my siblings. It also give my age away.
Each year, we sisters would get together with little sis to watch The Wizard of Oz. She had down syndrome, so we were the friends she had to do these things with. It was such a kick to watch her watch the movie. She knew it by heart, and would react to the scenes even before they happened.
I am sorry, no off beat holiday traditions for my family either I am afraid. But I loved hearing about yours. Thanks
Something I started doing many years ago was decorate a small tabletop aluminum tree for Christmas at work every year, it was so pretty no one wanted it removed, so I left it up for every holiday all year long, changing decor every month. It has become more ornate each year-lol!
Offbeat holiday tradition??? On Christmas eve, we go to an early church service, then go out to eat at Skyline. My grandkids love it.
I’m a retired elementary teacher, but one year I bought an artificial skinny Christmas tree with lights to have my second graders decorate. When administration told us to remove all our decorations (before we went home for the holidays), I thought fast and kept my tree up. When the kids came back in January, I had the kids help decorate their own bookmark ~ had an ‘art center’ where when they finished their morning work, they could make their bookmark and hang on the tree. I did this for every month usually incorporating a different art method and seasonal theme (like tiny tissue flowers made with eraser end of pencil glued to cut out hearts). We loved that tree! It lasted for several fun-filled themed years!!
My husband used to lay in the leaves beside the sidewalk leading to our porch. When kids would come by he’d sit up and offer candy. Parents and kids alike got a scare from that.
As grandparents we often go to see our kids and grandkids for the holidays
I suppose our “offbeat” holiday tradition is that we always have blender pear lime jello!
We didn’t really have a holiday tradition, but when the gardens were done, and the hay was all in, we always went up into the mountains camping and fishing to relax and rest for a few days. This would be fall, so that is part of why I love Thanksgiving.
We don’t have any off beat holidays but I do try to decorate for all of them even though our children are grown. Your web site looks awesome.
I really do t have an off beat tradition… but as my Grand daughter grew each year we would make a gingerbread house at Christmas time from a kit… but one year I had the bright idea to use graham crackers and our own frosting instead of the kit!!! I was told by my grand…” next year Nana I think we should use the kit….”😳
We don’t have too many off-beat traditions, but a not-so-ordinary one is Halloween pictures, always on the driveway, before Trick or Treating. I’ve always had the kids act out their costumes and taken tons of individual and group shots. Sometimes just the kids, sometimes with friends, sometimes the whole family with or without pets. One year, I made my daughter leave work for the photo shoot-lol.
Not too off beat, but as kids we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. My sister and I were only grandchildren, so both sets of grandparents would come on Christmas eve and we would go to bed in our new pj’s and get up after Santa came (after midnight?, well not really). We still got together for Christmas dinner at someone’s home, but the gift giving was Christmas Eve.
Sorry…pretty boring at this house, but love your table topper and dinner display with the spiders…would love to win the book…had fun reading others oddities.
My offbeat tradition is to visit the grave sights of my deceased relatives. My Grandmother paid tribute on Memorial day but when we lost my Mother at 50 years old, we included her in our visits even though she did not serve in the military. It has now become a whole day affairr.
Because neither of my husband or my family has Irish heritage we changed St Patrick’s day to Family Heritage day. For a celebratory meal I serve English, Scottish, and German food and use heirloom items on the table.
My husband and I met at a dance on new years eve. For years we have had a dance party to ring in the new year. It started with my husband, me and our boys dancing in the kitchen. Now it includes our boys, their wives, the in-laws, the grandchildren and anyone else we invite! So much fun!
I can’t think of anything offbeat. But, we have a tradition of going for a walk after Thanksgiving!!!
No off beat transitions. .
Not quite an offbeat tradition but every Christmas and Thanksgiving morning we make sausage pinwheels for breakfast. My mom started it and now my sister and I and our grown kids do it also. Great memories.
Your family traditions of skeletons at the table sounds really cute. I most offbeat decorating I have done is make pairs of monster, witch and various Halloween boots for the legs of the dining table chairs using a McCalls craft pattern. Great Halloween table topper. Thanks for sharing.
I love all holidays and even celebrate winter with snowmen up from January till Easter.
A favorite is fall and Thanksgiving.
Our unique holiday tradition is leaving milk and cake for Santa instead of cookies, because my youngest daughter was born on Christmas eve.
We don’t have any “off beat” traditions. We get together as a family for holidays when we can. I love the way you did Pat Sloan’s Spooky Halloween runner.
White chocolate bread pudding is a must for Thanksgiving!
Love your spooky fabric for Pats project.
We like to forego to the traditional turkey dinner at Thanksgiving and have a grilled steak instead! Most people are jealous when they hear about our fuss-free meal. Thank you for the chance to win Pat Sloan’s book. Cute take on her table runner.
Fruitcake made with a recipe my mom found in the 1960s. Leftover sausage balls and punch from Christmas Eve parties for Christmas morning breakfast. Comfort foods! It’s just not Christmas without them.
Our offbeat holiday tradition is that we never seem to celebrate on the actual day of whatever holiday. With the kids grown and in-law families and job schedules to consider we always seem to have to pick a different day.
We don’t really have an offbeat holiday celebration. What’s most offbeat about our holidays is watching all the different personalities mingle. It can sometimes get crazy (in a good way).
We used to put mazes, brain teasers and math problems in our daughter’s Easter basket. She had to solve them before she could wake up Mom & Dad! Still laughs about it now!
I guess I have a boring family. We don’t do anything off-beat for any holiday. I only decorate for Christmas – no other holiday, so I’m not into the decorating thing much…
Not an odd tradition but we have a Santa that goes on the tree every. It was given to me as a baby for my first Christmas and continues every year. Let’s just say Santa is a senior.
Pizza for Christmas
The Derby isn’t celebrated everywhere, but it is here in Kentucky. We celebrate and decorate big with roses and lilies on the first Saturday in May..(except 2020, that just wasn’t the same)
Our Christmas Eve tradition is to have clam chowder made with the turkey bone stock from thanksgiving. I love the merry little houses quilt, want to add 4 more blocks, make pockets for the Windows for advent calendar.
We don’t have any off beat traditions, but my husband and I have started going camping at Myrtle Beach, SC on Thanksgiving. We enjoy eating with all the numerous people who are also going to the cafeteria to celebrate.
I don’t know how “offbeat’ this is, but we celebrate half birthdays for our children. I would make a cake (sometimes only half of a cake) and the child got to choose what we had for dinner. No presents, but family fun time together.
With a large family, all our holiday get togethers are all off beat. LOL
Off beat traditions at Halloween is my husband and myself. We live in the country so no trick or treaters but if we know some who have kids we call to tell them to stop by and we get pictures. So fun to look back at these.
We do not have any off beat holiday traditions. Except one year my husband did invite someone from off the street to join us for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t a bad thing and we have great memories of that Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to sewing some of the projects in Pat’s book and trying to step outside of my normal.
I would love to win Pat’s book!! My off beat tradition was that my cousins and I would also dress up for halloween when I kids were small and we always would try to out do each other with homemade costumes. It was great fun!!
When our kids were young, we would have a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve. We would read the Christmas story, sing Happy Birthday, and have birthday cake.
Hi – don’t really have an offbeat tradition but when my daughters were younger on Christmas eve we would go to early church service and then drive around looking at light displays followed by hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows. My daughters have continued the tradition which just makes me happy. Thank you. The “spooky” runner is my favorite project.
I’m not sure how “offbeat” this tradition is, but every year at Thanksgiving each family member is given a construction paper Christmas stocking. Everyone writes their wish list for Christmas gifts on the stocking and then the stockings are posted on the fridge at Great Aunt Audrey’s (my) house. It seams Great Uncle David (my husband) has a direct line to Santa and can keep Santa and ALL his elves apprised of everyone’s wants. This tradition has been going on since I was a child, it’s a lot of fun and the children look forward to that time each year after dinner when the list making begins in anticipation of the next big family gathering on Christmas Eve and PRESENTS!
My family’s “offbeat” holiday tradition would be that we maintain and decorate the family members head stones on Memorial Day — even though our family members were not all US veterans.
When I grew up my family did not leave milk and cookies for Santa but a cheese sandwich and a bottle of beer. It was always a cheese sandwich because Christmas Eve was a day of not eating meat. This was a tradition my father started and observed!
My parents were from Europe where Christmas is celebrated on Christmas eve. After a big dinner we went to Christmas Eve mass, then open Christmas presents!
Is my daughter the only one who receives a small gift from the leprechauns every St. Patrick’s Day? I love your take on the Spooky Twist! Your fabrics are great.
We enjoy decorating the house for Halloween. Spooky and cute decorations inside and out greet the many trick-or-treaters from the neighborhood. Love your Spooky Twist Table Topper!
Don’t know if this is off beat, but my mil always had the youngest to the oldest open Christmas presents. As the family grew it became an all day affair. We ended up doing the same with our children. Would love a copy of the book. Thanks for the giveaway.
One year on Mother’s Day my daughter decided that since there was no kids day that we needed to celebrate Mother Daughter Day. It became a wonderful holiday that we still share.
On super bowl Sunday, we have a day of food even though now it’s just the two of us.
Not sure if we have an offbeat family tradition. Does protecting the dogs from scary fireworks count? 🇺🇸 🎇 🇺🇸 🎆
The year that they began building our house was the year that the weather was perfectly pleasant for being outside. Basement walls were poured, but nothing above ground level. It was a year for sitting in our future driveway to pass out Halloween candy!
In my family we have turkey at Thanksgiving and no ham is served. At Christmas we only serve ham. My sister bought and served a turkey for Christmas one year and her family let her know it was not appreciated. Don’t believe she will do that again.
Can’t say we have any off beat traditions but was at a b-day party today & started talking about b-days after one announced she is pregnant & when she is due. So those of us with winter b-days bemoaned how our days didn’t get the celebrations summer b-days do. My sister’s b-day in August was always at the MD State Fair & we always ate under a tree in the parking lot with fried chicken, sides, sweet tea, & an Angel Food cake. Not really sour but everyone who had a February b-day like me agreed that we were short changed as when we were younger school celebrated Washington, Lincoln, Valentine’s & we think everyone was partied out when it came to our b-days.
Your Halloween Fabrics and Table runner are awesome. I decorate for Halloween and Christmas and am usually the first one in the neighborhood to get decorations out. Would love to win Pat Sloan’s book as I live on a fixed income and buying patterns and books is not an option for me right now, I just keep on making quilts for the family from whatever material I can find on sale.
My daughter in law does a pumpkin carving day. We carve pumpkins and have great food. My son does a Christmas light show every year. Last year it was on Zoom.
We have done “treasure hunts” for various holidays or birthdays. We have changed up the hunt for various holidays or a birthday so that the kids wouldn’t know what to expect. Sometimes it would would be Easter Hunt, a special Christmas surprise, Valentine’s Day gifts or one of their Birthdays. They would first have a “treasure map” leading them to the first clue and then that clue would give info on where to find the next clue and they have to figure it out. The number of clues have ranged from 9 to 18. At the end they would find their gift for that special day.
We are mostly off-beat as a family, but not so much in traditions! I suppose the strangest thing we do is eat lasagna on most Thanksgivings as my grown kids don’t like turkey!
duchick at gmail dot com
Pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. Even away from family, I still keep this one up.
We serve the cranberry sauce from the can on the nicest China dish with a silver serving spoon. And we don’t pre-slice it. My sister-in-law almost messed it up her first Thanksgiving with us. She was going to slice it up with a spoon before putting it on the table. I saved it – whew! Almost ruined it! Lol!
Our traditional halloween dinner is mummy ghosts made with hot dogs, refrigerator croissant dough, and mustard for eyes.
My mom use to fix her baked beef tips for Christmas dinner. That’s one of my best memories of her.
We have lots of holiday traditions with my family, but I wouldn’t consider any of them “offbeat”! We do have a large pumpkin carving party every year (except for during the pandemic) , everyone carves a pumpkin, & there are several categories that everyone votes for the best pumpkin in that category.
We are old and set in our ways so we only do traditional holidays. I like your Hajjoweem version of Pat’s table topper.
We used to play Monopoly every New Year’s eve when our son was younger. Just our family. No parties or big gatherings.
We watch the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles for Thanksgiving.
When I was growing up, my mom hated the mess of carving pumpkins, so we always painted them. I still do that today. My favorite year was when my sister created Voldemort with a ghost pumpkin.
most of our family holiday meal are of beat its what ever the vote is and some times they are very unique . i try to decorate most holidays
My fall-time holidays get so confusing because I celebrate 2 Thanksgivings —one American and one Canadian— and in between both of those there is Halloween. I never know which holiday to decorate for! It’s sort of an autumn mishmash here. 😁
I get together with all the females in the family to celebrate Christmas in July. We have a luncheon and make crafts.
I love the skeleton at the table! How cute is that? What a great holiday tradition. And now you have a new table topper to go with your great table setting! The off-beat tradition that I did for years was make my kids get a photo with Santa that we used for the holiday Christmas card….you can imagine as young adults they Hated it. They eventually convinced me that they did not want this card going out to parents of their friends or neighbors, so we have curtailed that for now…I’m just waiting for them to have kids of their own!! Thanks for sharing the giveaway.
My husbands family always had oyster stew for breakfast Christmas morning…We continue the tradition but have added other breakfast favorites
I guess we are pretty boring – no “offbeat” traditions here. The first project from Pat’s book that I want to make is the Spooky Twist! Your’s is so cool! Thanks for sharing! HUGS… and stitches
Maybe not so offbeat, and living in Ohio, we have always grilled burgers and hot dogs for Christmas. We usually don’t have snow so it’s not too bad!
We don’t have any off beat traditions but I always have different decorations and tablecloth’s every month for whatever season and holiday.
When our daughter was small, my husband and she would make Christmas cookies and take them around to our neighbors around Christmas time. When she had a daughter of her own and was old enough to stand up, she started making the Christmas cookies with grandpa. My husband has since passed away but at Christmas time the always bring up making cookies with grandpa.
We don’t have any off beat traditions but I always have different decorations and tablecloths every month on our table for whatever season or holiday there is.
Growing up, my Mom sprayed a branch with white paint and put it in a container filled with plaster of Paris. Every holiday we would have a few handmade small ornaments attached to the smaller branches on our kitchen table. We loved celebrating the different holidays for a few days all through year. The table tree wasn’t out during Christmas because we always had a wonderful fresh Christmas tree.
Our kids are grown and live in other states thus we do not celebrate Halloween like we used to. I love your Spooky Twist table quilt projects and your decorating ideas. Would love to win Pat’s book for future projects.
We love to “over” decorate for Halloween. Glow in the dark skeltons sit on the toilet and in the bathtub.
Can’t really think of an off beat family tradition we have for the holidays, but whenever our family has a chance to get together, since we are spread all across the country, we all tend to get a little off beat, LOL! Love your gray and black version of the spooky table runner! Thanks for sharing!
During the year we have secret family members, it’s so much fun to come up with surprises for each other. One year my Mom was so afraid one of her gifts was a snake she never opened it until we came over at Christmas and had a good laugh when it was just a scarf. But it is so much fun. To get a little something just when you need it throughout the year.
I love your project. I want to try that this year for our table.
We like to have corn beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s day.
Early December the grandkids come over and we bake cookies, they get to frost and sprinkle to their hearts content and then decorate all the. Christmas trees. We make cocoa and taste-test the cookies, best day ever.
Our family enjoys all kinds of off beat traditions and celebrations.
Generations of our family have enjoyed cards, we don’t need a reason to have fun just bring out the double deck!
We have tried to continue the Scandinavian tradition of lutefisk and lefse meal for Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. With the plandemic limiting many family gatherings these past 2 winters, we have threatened to do a “Christmas in July” lutefisk get-together.
No offbeat anymore now that I’m retired but back in the old days Halloween was a fun one.
Thank you for the opportunity to win Pat’s new book. I love the winter/Christmas season. My favorite are crisp blue and white quilts that are reflections of ice and snow of the season.
We still break out the crayons and coloring books on Christmas Eve and color Christmas pictures…..haha my kids are in their 30’s now!! Maybe I should make a quilt out of all the past pictures???
I would love to win the book. We decorate for Valentine’s Day and hide candy throughout our house!
Thanks for the opportunity! Great Ideas.
On Christmas eve my family gathers for a traditional dinner. We started a memory book by taking a group photo, everyone shares memories from the past year then we play games to see who will be the keeper of the book until next Christmas and plan the game to choose the following book keeper. The book is stored in a decorative box with all the dated photos. So fun to look back in the book at at the past pictures!
My two siblings and I are 5 years apart and Mom was 20 years older than me so every 5 years in the fall we would have a Big 5 birthday celebration for all of us. Our gifts to each other were usually more funny and less serious.
I love to decorate all the holidays – have theme boxes to prove it. Also love to sew/quilt. Liked your black & gray halloween table topper an can see it in various colors for many holidays.
We get together on Christmas Eve and eat finger foods and play dirty bingo. It’s fun to see the things people have found during the year to wrap as gifts. 😆
I guess our “off beat” holiday tradition would be that we never have “traditional” Christmas dinners. Every year, we’d pick something different for Christmas Eve Dinner. Everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken, Homemade Chinese, Make your own pizzas. Now that we have grandkids, it has changed as son’s children are still young and they live 4 hours away and now my daughter hosts us but they still make something different and not traditional.
So our holiday traditions are pretty low key and normal, but I created a tradition about 11 years ago when driving to the beach. Every year on the first drive over to the beach (my inlaws live 9 miles to the beach) we watch the cartoon movie Surfs Up. We have introduced several of our teen boys friends to the movie and it is the most quoted movie in the house. Followed closely by Star Wars films,The Princess Bride, and Goonies.
Santa sneaks’ in early on Christmas eve and leaves PJs and a movie for the little kids to watch. I started this with my own Santa signature when my kids were little. Now my daughter has taken over when the kids don’t get to come to Grammie’s to find Santa’s gift. Santa is one sly old elf as he always seems to know which house the little kids will be at on Christmas eve to watch a movie before bed.
After the Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, dishes done, presents opened, then it is time for the Rook cards or UNO to come out. Great memories.
My daughter got married on Halloween and it was fabulous! Now we have a Halloween Anniversary party every year.
We don’t have any off beat traditions, but we do play games after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.
I really enjoy decorating through the year for every holiday – and that includes a seasonal tree with different color lights for the seasons as well as table decor !
No real offbeat holiday traditions at this time. My children are grown and I don’t have grandchildren. I do like to make holiday items and usually give them to my friends
I don’t really have any off beat celebrations. I just love to decorate differently almost each month. And Pat Sloan’s book will give more ideas on how to do this.
We are pretty typical as a family. We have done lost of slightly offbeat stuff over the years, but, none has ever stuck so that I could say it has become tradition. There are traditional foods we make such as butter tarts and krumkake for Christmas and pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, but., not any defined activities. Thanks!!
When we were growing up, our mother served carrots with dinner on Halloween, because carrots were “good for your eyes.” We were sure it helped us see better when we went out trick-or-treating that night! While not having a specific tradition as adults now, we have done some off-beat things (in my mind). My husband was an anthropologist and had a real skull, which was occasionally set out by the front door for trick-or-treaters. When we first got an answering machine for our landline phone (1980s?), I used spooky sounds from a CD to create our greeting, which we used all month. People would call just to listen to it. Also we use that same CD to play scary sounds outside the house on Halloween Eve… but some kids won’t come up to the door because of it. These days we use spooky sounds on our video doorbell as well.
I love the skeleton meeting! My kids are grown, and there are no grandkids yet, but I just may borrow that idea. Our town has a history of pirates, and costumed “pirates” are involved in many local events, especially the big annual shrimp festival in May. I can envision setting our dining room table for the month of May with a pirate skeleton group having a meal of shrimp! Love your treatment of Pat’s topper. 🙂
Offbeat and quirky? I leave a bit of the different holidays decorations out year round with a mix mash of pumpkins, witches & fall mixed with shamrocks and bunnies. This year, the Christmas tree has stayed put and will be ready for Christmas 2021!
I live in a famous haunted house in my town and I love to decorate the whole house for Halloween! I love your idea of setting the table for Halloween
I sure do love your table topper and can picture it in many different fabrics and colors. As a kid my Dad used to take me to the tree lot on Christmas Eve or the day before to pick out a tree so we could get a “good deal”. He used to tell me to act sad if the tree was too costly for us so the seller would mark down the price. Funny how I still remember that.
Each year on Christmas night we open the last gift of the holiday. By the time supper is done, we are tuckered out and settling in for the night. But wait…there is one more gift to open! : ) It is always something interesting…not underwear or such! LOL It is a book, a puzzle, a game…something to relax and enjoy. : )
For Easter I do a scavenger hunt for the Easter basket
Don’t really have an “offbeat” holiday here… we are pretty Traditional I guess… But thank you for chance to win your Give-a-way 🙂
I don’t have any off beat traditions, but I collect cat themed ornaments for Christmas. My sister in law collects mouse ornaments.
We really do not have any off beat holiday celebrations-just a traditional family get together with good food.
I like your creativity with your crafts and sewing. Your fabric designs are adorable.
I must say that Christmas is probably our unusual holiday celebration.
Because of marriages, extended families and being separated by 350 miles.
I started the tradition of celebrating Christmas on or before Thanksgiving. It is a great time for my children to visit, do their Christmas shopping for the rest of the family take advantage of the pre-holiday relaxed shopping. When they visit we all exchange our Christmas gifts. And lot of times they enjoy the relaxed time together to finally sit and enjoy learning from me how to sew, quilt and do embroidery as well as many other crafts. They usually go home with a lot of homemade gifts and personalized gifts for all the other Extended family members. 💕🥰
I wish I had some funny holiday tradition…sorry, I don’t! I guess the strangest thing we do at holidays is that, for Christmas Eve, we always eat pizza. We go to Church Christmas Eve and come home to pizza.
I’m finding out through Pat’s book tour and all the holiday questions, I have a boring life! No continuing family traditions. Probably because my parents are gone & my husband & I have no kids. The only tradition that comes to mind is cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.
Thanks for the opportunity to win Pat’s book.
Carol Grant
We always have a party at our church and have a cemetery walk.
My entire extended family wears couples matching pajamas on Christmas day for our family get together. We keep them secret until Christmas morning.
We have started a Labor Day family getaway to get all of the grown kids together with mom and dad and of course the grandkids.
My wacky holiday tradition is that after the winter holidays and birthdays on 12-27, 12-29, & 01-09, I pack up and my sister and I go for a long weekend quilting retreat.
We don’t really have any offbeat or otherwise traditions, except savings the champagne cork from each wedding anniversary.
One of my favorite family traditions is for the Fourth of July. We all get up early, load up and drive to the beach. My dad would always make us breakfast tacos and orange juice. We would stay until around 1 o’clock when the beach would start to get crowded. We’d head home for showers and naps and the reconvene at my parents’ house for brisket and salads and flag cake. It was great especially when we all started having kids and there was nearly a dozen kids running around.
Every New Year’s we open the front door at midnight to let the old year out and the new year in. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I really love your tradition of setting your dining room table for the month and inviting spooky guests to dinner!🎃
We have several neighborhoods that decorate for Christmas. I would put the top down on my Mustang, pick up my son & grandchildren, & tour the areas. Had to pay attention to the weather report, we get a lot of rain in the Pacific Northwest.
No offbeat holiday traditions at out house. Just like to celebrate them with family.
We lived in Spain for many years. Their Mothers Day is celebrated in a different week than the USA one…..so I get two celebrations for Mothers Day!!!
i love all the holidays and have quilts and wall hangings for each one. now i’m off to celebrate National Sewing Machine Day.
When my husband and I were married, all of our five children were within five years if each other. His three children started a tradition to pass a particular gift bag between themselves to gift a bottle of wine selected for the recipient. One year they chose to include me and I lost their gift bag. Shame on me for breaking their tradition…..
I don’t really have any offbeat traditions. But,I love your table topper!
A cherished family tradition for my family is when our grandmother made homemade stollen on Christmas Eve day. That afternoon our grandfather delivered one to each of their children’s homes to be enjoyed after Midnight Mass and/or Christmas morning.
Thanks for participating and creating your table topper. Love your choice of fabrics. It will go very nicely with our mid-century modern white plates with their thin silver trim.
I guess our holiday tradition is we get together on Christmas Eve to open gifts and party!
You can’t get out of bed on Christmas morning untill you hear Gene Autry singing here comes Santa Claus.
No off beat traditions at our house. I love all the patterns in Pat Sloan’s new book and would like to have it. The patterns need to be made.
No off beat traditions, but we love Christmas, Your table runner is great! Now I want to make one in Christmas fabric.
Going for a ride around the country side.
I always hide the pickle on the Christmas tree
on Christmas Eve the one who finds it first gets a special gift….
I dress up every Halloween and take the kids out trick or treating. I took my kids the grandkids and now I take the great grandkids we have a great time.
Everything about Halloween (my favorite holiday) is offbeat. It starts with a family picking a minimum of 30 pumpkins from an un manicured farm. Need to be their farm opening day and strive to be first car in line to get biggest ones. New yard decorations each year, including full sized bodies. A week before Halloween family does pumpkin carving & lighting. On Halloween themed costumes for all neighbor adults, trick or treating and party. It’s more than a full month of prep and activity. Love your new Halloween line and how you selected it for your tablerunner.
No off-beat holiday tradtions, but we always spend them together when we can. I love your new fabrics and I need a Halloween table runner, so… 🙂
I hang up a tacky foil Happy Birthday banner for each family member’s birthday. It’s not a wacky tradition but is guaranteed to get a roll of the eyes for ‘Mom’s wacky banner’.
We have off beat meals for the traditional holidays. Examples are lasagna for Christmas and vegan stew for Thanksgiving.
I am happy to read that many don’t have off beat traditions. I guess for me was when I was working, I would volunteer to work Christmas Eve day as long as I was at my parents by 6pm for dinner. And have the 26th off to extend the holiday a bit and go shopping.
We don’t have any off-beat traditions but enjoy our family and friends.
I decorate our Christmas Tree different every year on a four year cycle. It happened when we downsized our tree and I needed to reduce the number of ornaments. I couldn’t get rid of them so I grouped them by theme and now every year I get to enjoy a different look.
My family celebrates St. Urho’s day which is March 16 – just before St. Pats day. Its a Finnish made up holiday here. lol We wear purple and Make Finnish breads to have open face sandwiches for dinner. I love your table topper – I would love to give that a go! thank you!
We make an annual trek to a nearby town that’s festooned with fabulous Halloween decorations! We park our car and walk through the different sections and watch all of the marvelous computer-controlled musical displays and mini-movies.
After Halloween, those same neighborhoods convert their decor to Christmas-themed decor including nightly “snowfalls” ( hey, I’m in Florida so it’s kinda nice!), caroling and crazy blow up figures! It’s a blast!
For years we had a ceramic-type goose (I had purchased from a catalogue) that came with seasonal outfits. Of course the Halloween outfit was our favorite! The Goose would be decked out in its cape, a wig of long green hair and pointed witches hat 😉 it was/is a Hoot!!
We have some different family traditions. My mother-in- law always made a birthday cake for Jesus, read the Christmas story, and we sang Happy Birthday before we opened presents. She had stocking night where she bought everyone a new pair of socks, filled one and hid it and gave the other one to the person it belonged to and then they had to find their stocking by the lights of the Christmas tree. My son keeps those tradition going with his grandchildren and children. I added a new one of pie crust cookies. Now my great-granddaughter helps make them. If I don’t make them, I hear about it because that is the favorite snack at Christmas meal with the family.
I don’t really have any traditions other than family dinner for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
It’s not really that off-beat, but even tho it’s just us two, my husband and I like to decorate for Halloween as we did for our kids. I had made several articulated skeletons from old fashioned paper plates with body parts attached with string, and the kids had drawn different expressions on their faces plates, and cut out tracings of their hands for the skeletons hands. We would tape down and pose these tall skeletons in all the windows, and in chairs on the porch. Over the years the hands got bigger, and the faces took on fun and gruesome expressions. My mom started this tradition when my 4 brothers and I were kids. Now our kids have a bunch and carry out the tradition with their kids.
I take Christmas treats to the barn cats I feed every day. They don’t have a clue. Took them toys one year- catnip mice. That didn’t last long.
I’m enjoying this tour for the holiday book. It is great to see how you make the project yours. Might have to start setting a faux party table. I like the idea of chair leg decorations too.
Camping on a mountain at 8500 feet with all the kids is a tradition we do every summer. Some sleep in hammocks, tents, RV’s, etc. Always a fun time!
Our skeletons are set up for a picnic outside for the month of October.
Our off beat tradition would be our Christmas dinner. We have my Grandma Rees’s recipe of baked spaghetti. It’s what I grew up having on Christmas Eve and brought it forward for my family, many times on Christmas Eve freeing up my daughter-in-laws to spend time with their families and not having to do two families celebrations and meals in one day.
No offbeat tradition here. Love your Spooky Table Topper!
we always have pie for breakfast on thanksgiving day….the dinner often leaves everyone too full for yummy dessert of home made pies, so we have it at breakfast instead….like pumpkin or custard or apple….something sorta healthy….
At Halloween we always put up a homemade “witch on a broom who has run into a tree” on the parkway tree (facing a t-intersection). It was the kick-off of the Halloween season. The Christmas kick-off is the making and tasting of homemade “Baileys”. The kids are obviously older now!
Now that both my daughters are married and have families of their own we decided to have a Christmas Eve brunch so that they will be able to visit with their in laws on Christmas Day and/or stay home if they want!
We celebrate Festivus in the summer. We even have T shirts with Festivus on them!
Our family has a movie night showing White Christmas. Always a great time for all!
Good choice of project, Melissa. Halloween is a favorite at our house. I seem to spend more time on Halloween projects than other holiday projects. Very nice table runner.
We are pretty normal around here. I love to decorate for Christmas the most. Don’t have time
in the summer-garden, flowers, being outside!!
We don’t really have any quirky traditions. Not sure if always gifting my niece and nephew pjs for Christmas and allowing them to open all our gifts to them on Christmas Eve.
Looking back to my childhood , I remember putting a big talent show together with my brother and sister to entertain our Thanksgiving guests….we played our instruments, sang, told jokes, recited a poem, etc.. It was a lot of fun and I guess it kept us busy so we would stay out of the kitchen.
As far as special things for our kids, we ‘d often vacation around their birthdays and we also celebrated their 1/2 year birthdays with a library book sale or outing….on their actual birthday everyone got to pick their favorite meal and dessert.
Thanks for the opportunity to win the giveaway.
We don’t really have any off beat traditions for a holiday. Your table topper will look great with your Halloween table.
We love to make an Easter egg tree filled with hand painted eggs!
We make up silly names for each other every Christmas for each gift. We really have to put some thought into it to get a great funny name each time. Needless to say, we laugh a lot.
My weirdest holiday tradition is making Polish Poppy Seed Rolls for the entire family. Although not Polish the family I married into was. They immediately adopted me into the fold when they discovered I made the best they had ever had!
I can’t think of anything offbeat. Just normal I guess.
We play crazy gift swapping games.
Our normal Christmas night is we watch, Home Alone, then Elf and Polar Express. One year our oldest grand daughter asked if we could eat Christmas Dinner in our pajamas. So everyone opened up their new pajamas and that is what we wore to dinner.
My son’s birthday is Oct. 30th so we tie in a Halloween Scavenger Hunt with costumed ghouls jumping out when you least expect it. Fun!!
After Christmas gifts are opened, we all need to find the Christmas pickle ornament that my sister has hidden. This has taken days some years as the pickle is only about an inch long and the only proviso is that it has to be in evergreens somewhere in her house, including any of multiple trees or garland that has been hung
My son’s birthday is Oct. 30th so we create in a Halloween Scavenger Hunt with costumed ghouls jumping out when you least expect it. Fun!!
We celebrate my granddaughter’s birthday with Easter bunnies, since she was born on Easter Sunday. I am not sure when her birthday will be on Easter Sunday again, but I like to celebrate both on the same day as we did for her birth. I would love to win the book and try out the wonderful patterns inside!
We have Thanksgiving in July when we have more family together. Deep fried turkey and all the fixings had dessert at picnic tables.
When my daughter was small, she would spend time on Christmas eve with her dad’s family. When I picked her up we would get take out Chinese for our Christmas Eve dinner and that has always stuck with us. As she got older and delivered pizzas on Christmas Eve, we still would get take out Chinese and she would eat hers when she got home. Now she lives in another state and has children of her own. My husband and I still get take out Chinese and my daughter does the same with her family.
I can’t think of any offbeat holiday traditions or plans, but I did realize this year that Easter is almost the only time I have a Mimosa (we do Easter brunch).
I have a garden window which is decorated differently for each month. It is tradition watching the Christmas lighted boats on the local river with cocoa in hand. Birthdays we have a special placemat and favorite meal is made. In June ( this year it will be in September do to Covid ) we watch a classic car parade sitting in a lawn chair with a favorite meal at hand!
We don’t have any offbeat traditions. However, enjoyed reading the idea of rotating (themed) Christmas tree ornaments every4 years! I may start that tradition!!
Hi Melissa – We have several strange traditions in our family, but my favorite is Thanksgiving lunch. At our house, lunch consists of an MRE: “Meal Ready to Eat” in Army speak. My husband is a vet and my oldest daughter was always fascinated by the MRE packs when she was little. So my husband started letting her pick one to open and eat for Thanksgiving lunch each year. We have had so many laughs over those packets that it’s grown into a yearly tradition for the whole family. It will be a bit different this year: my little MRE-loving girl goes off to college in the fall.
Texas caviar and sherbet and ginger ale punch on New Years eve.
We have a Halloween tradition with those same ‘monsters’ your little guy liked to visit! One year there were a couple sitting at the tables at a Halloween luncheon I hosted in my home. Another time they were leaning on the edge if the swimming pool as they ‘chatted’ while in the water! Other times they ride in the car and wave out the window! The list goes on!
I love carving pumpkins at Halloween, but with a twist. I always do two. One is traditionally carved, and the second is always done with an electric drill. Guess which way is faster? lol
One crazy thing we used to do when my husband and I were first married was to give the most outrageous, humorous birthday cards we could find to everyone in his family when we celebrated Christmas together. Why, you ask? Because we were TERRIBLE about remembering birthdays!! So, we decided to celebrate everyone’s birthday at Christmas. Everyone looked forward to finishing opening Christmas gifts so they could see what kind of crazy cards we bought that year. We haven’t done that for many years because the family kept expanding, and it was just difficult for all of us to be together at Christmas. Hubby and I had the most fun going to a card shop together and reading all the humorous birthday cards and picking out something specific for each person. I had totally forgotten that we used to do that. Fun memory for me.
My birthday is the day after Christmas and every year it was celebrated on the 26th. I always got a homemade cake and ice cream and a separate present from the Christmas presents. When I was 12 my mom got a new Necchi sewing machine and the next day on my birthday I got her old Necchi as my first sewing machine. I was thrilled as I didn’t have to wait for my mom to finish sewing so I could sew. I always appreciated that my parents did this instead of having everything on Christmas day! It must have been hard for my mother because there was 4 of us kids.
Decorating sugar cookies for Christmas and Halloween is a tradition that everyone loves at our house!
I don’t know how off beat this is but it is our family tradition. Now that our kids are married and we have to share Hollidays, we usually get one extended stretch with them in November or December. So we call the time Thanksmas. We usually pick one day for our huge dinner. A second day, since my husband is Sam, he delivers presents from Samta!!!
I decorate the inside and outside of the house for Halloween. But, the most quirky holiday tradition is having our Elf on a Shelf (Table) visit us every year from December 1-24. He does antics and brings little things every single day and has for the last ten years. My youngest son will be 7 and I don’t know how much longer he’ll believe in Santa and the Elf but I will probably still have Table visit in some form!
We celebrate “Juneapaloosa” – which is like a family reunion every June (pre-Covid). We always have a theme (patriotic, more often than not), bring food, play games, and enjoy being together. We created this holiday so that it didn’t interfere with other holidays and most of the family could come. We look forward to it every year.
When our kids were little having the huge Thanksgiving lunch and then a few weeks later having it all over again for Christmas was a little much four our littles who didn’t like all of the southern casseroles that were part of my husbands families traditions so, we swapped up our Christmas meal and started grilling hamburgers with all of the summertime fixings. The kids love it, my husband loves it and we all enjoy it much better than left over casseroles for the whole next week.
Offbeat, I’d have to say summer and winter solstice, after have had lived in Alaska for 40 years. Street fairs on June 21st, a Midnight Sun Baseball Game with the local minor league, and winter was fireworks, well because with 24-hrs of sunlight all summer, you couldn’t see any fireworks.
Our Christmas gift exchange involves making your gift for the name you draw.
not really off beat. But, thanksgiving is the only holiday when all of my sisters and brothers come home at the same time. since my nieces were little we have given them their christmas present as $$ and then starting Thursday night do a Black Friday shopping marathon– sometime is a couple of hours and sometimes a couple of days.
when my youngest niece was in grade school and the class was asked about favorite holidays– she said Black Friday– there was some explaining to do at the school
love your take on the halloween table topper
I don’t think we have any offbeat traditions. We must be a boring normal family. We get together for holidays, we have few decorations, good food, and a fun time.
For Christmas, our tree is not complete until a Lincoln Memorial ornament is on the tree and it plays a few bars of the song “America the Beautiful”. Then when u turn on the tree lights daily the song plays again. My kids, age 21 and 16, think that is very normal and is a sign Christmas is coming. Lol
We do finger foods Christmas Day and have our big Christmas dinner the day before or the day after Christmas; usually the day after.
I have a night around Halloween called “Boogedy night” where all my grandchildren come over and we watch a Halloween themed movie and make gooey popcorn with lots of candy in it. They stay over night and then we have a Halloween cereal in the morning. They always beg all year for the gooey popcorn but I tell them it is only for our special night once a year so they will look forward to it!
Not sure how “off beat” this is, but at Christmas time we set up 8 decorated trees in our home. It’s a literal winter wonderland and we love it! We started when our daughter was going to college at BYU Hawaii. She was tired of the tropical weather and longing for snow and cold so we transformed the whole house into a Christmas tree forest before she flew home. She was so surprised! We all loved it so much that now we start setting up the first of November.
During the hunting weekend, the women gather to do Christmas Cookie baking and exchanging. We make 15-20 different kinds. The goal is to get some in the freezer for Christmas.
On Thanksgiving Eve we all get together and eat pie for dinner. We used to save the pie for Thanksgiving dinner but no one was eating it because everyone was too full by that time so we now eat the pie before dinner (the night before). Just another way to get everyone together.
love your fabrics and what you made from pat’s book
We do not have any quirky holiday traditions but they are always changing now that the kids are grown. Beautiful work!
I inherited my offbeat holiday tradition from my family’s best friends, who always “swept out the old year” with brooms on New Years Eve. Very satisfying when the old year had been lousy to vigorously sweep it out the door.
I’ve actually started decorating more for Halloween since we moved to our current house. It is fun.
Every year I make my boss a Halloween item. That’s her favorite holiday!
Melissa I love the colours you used in the table topper. I need a new table runner and we just painted the kitchen grey.
We really don’t have an off beat tradition , but at Christmas we always start with a glass of orange juice and champagne and open our stockings first. We then take a break to get the turkey stuffed and in the oven, have a muffin and coffee and then open the rest of the gifts.
BTY Melissa, I joined your blog when you were doing the block a month for beginners years ago. Your instructions were great and I learned a lot. Made my first 2 quilts for my 2 granddaughters .
I have also made many of the items you have posted. Thank You
Watching the new Star Wars movie each Christmas as a family!
Last October, my little town was one of the ones that offered Trick or Treat. In my opinion, if the kids had to wear masks at school, how could we deny them a mask-wearing celebration in the evening? Usually I have a big bowl of mixed wrapped candy and hand a couple to each child. I do this to keep in check the occasional child who thinks they should take 10. I always sit on the porch with my feet on the steps because we get too many children to be constantly opening the door. It also avoids having kids trip on the steps in long costumes. I prewrapped three items in a zip-closed snack bag. I used my gloved hand to transfer one of these bags onto a plastic skeleton hand from the dollar store which I used to deposit the candy into each child’s bag. (I wasn’t coordinated enough to scoop with the skeleton had as it was too shallow).
When my son lived at home we always let him choose what we would have for dinner on Christmas Eve. We had some strange meals, canned ravioli, popcorn etc. It was so much fun.
Cherries Jubilee on Presidents Day! Yum!
I love to decorate Halloween and as the kids are gone, I do it more with fabrics.
I love Halloween because it was my Grandpa’s BD, Mom let us dress up to go visit him. My favorite costume was a cowgirl. So our Halloweens were Western!
no off beat traditions,but I sure miss what I had growing up..Now everyone is grown or passed on.I do love making things for the holidays which is why I would love to win this book.
We fill our house with guests from countries around the world as well as family and other Americans for our Thanksgiving feast. Along with the traditional American foods, we often have food from other countries to enjoy as well.
Well, I guess watching Home Alone every year on Christmas is an offbeat tradition. We all laugh and scream at the hilarious scenes. Year before last, we broke tradition and watched Chevy Chase in the National Lampoons Christmas. It was just as screamy as the other movie. I guess we just like the family “scream and laugh along” movies! Groundhog Day is up next for Thanksgiving. We look forward to the together time after the big, yummy meal!
Our favorite off beat tradition is at Easter when we have family and friends over we do a scavenger hunt. I sit down about two weeks before and make it up. I try to keep things within walking distance or things you can see from our own yard. They can do it in groups of 2 or 3. They really enjoyed it! We have done egg tosses in the past, too, but they can get pretty throw happy with the eggs. Some have ended up wearing them! LOL
After several large, traditional family Christmas dinners at all the relatives at Christmas we offered to make our small family dinner cater to our young kids and let them pick the meal. We ended up with popcorn shrimp, Mac & cheese and chocolate pudding…EXACTLY what they wanted to eat . They are grown now and while their palettes have thankfully changed, we still incorporate those dishes into the menu every year, just for tradition.
Off beat? I guess it’s still hiding Easter treats for my adult children.
That’s really cool. We don’t do weird holiday stuff, just basic get togethers. No gift swapping or anything. I love to decorate though and I love Halloween. Your topper is great!
We always wake the kids up at 4:30am on Christmas morning and then eat breakfast and go to my MIL’s for snacks. not sure if that is offbeat or not.
Beautiful fabric, love your Halloween tradition
I do most of my sewing in the fall / winter when I’m not outside in the yard/garden. So I love to sew up seasonal items. This book would be great. Not sure our family has any offbeat traditions.
Not very off beat, but made mummy dogs for Halloween. Love your project and fun way to celebrate the holiday- enjoyed reading how others celebrate 🎉.
I once made Chili Soup for a Christmas Eve supper and my Father-in-Law thought it a strange meal to serve. Guess it did not turn in to a tradition, however!