Autumn Garrett
Editorial Assistant

Indian Mound celebrated its Fifth Annual Fall Festival and pumpkin patch on Saturday, October 23. The association invited the community to join in on the fun and enjoy time with their neighbors and family.

Every year the Indian Mound Neighborhood Association (IMNA) hosts this celebration to bring the community closer together, to have something fun that the entire neighborhood can enjoy. The Association even purchased all of the pumpkins given out during the event from a local vendor.

“This is absolutely my favorite event of the year,” said Brynne Musser, the Treasurer of the IMNA. “It is so cool to see our neighbors that may not be able to make it to our meetings. It’s so fun to see kids and have it be a family event. I feel like this is the one time of the year that I get to really meet and interact with neighbors from across Indian Mound.”

At the pumpkin patch, they not only handed out small pumpkins for everyone in the family, but gave every family their own giant pumpkin, as well. Even better, all the pumpkins were free. Along with the pumpkins, neighbors were invited to paint the pumpkins that they got to pick out.

“I’m going to draw a pretty butterfly on mine,” said Sarah, a little girl who decided to paint the pumpkin she chose herself from the patch.

Children were excited to create their own design for their pumpkin, jumping at the chance to paint something that they could display proudly outside their homes on Halloween night.

Many children also showed up in their Halloween costumes, showing off their outfits for the costume contest. From a terrifying scarecrow to a buzzing bumblebee, everyone had fun joining in on this activity the weekend before Halloween.

Organizations that serve the neighborhood such as the Kansas City Public Library and Care Beyond the Boulevard came to the pumpkin patch to talk about their services to the community. Musser said these organizations do a lot of work for the community and it’s great to have them come out face-to-face again.

The festival was an event for the entire neighborhood to come together and celebrate with their families and neighbors. Organizers from the Neighborhood Association cannot wait for the next pumpkin patch or even another event to further bring the neighborhood together.

“We just love events like this, this is kind of our longest running one, so we would love to do more events like this,” Musser said. “So if there are people in the community that have ideas they want to share or maybe have a summertime one, or even a spring, we would love to host more events that get people out and interacting with each other and meeting their neighbors. We hope it grows every year and that each year we’ve got more organizations from the community.”