Halloween hits & misses?

[ourbabygirl]

So I've been handing out two glow sticks/ bracelets to the older kids (thanks to a suggestion from the BBB, maybe Melaine?), and they seem to be going over pretty well (I heard one kid remark on his way back to the street: "Dude, we got glow sticks!"). Also have some Halloween pencils, Halloween-themed 'whistles' (from Target), and packets of Goldfish, Teddy Grahams, and mini boxes of raisins for the little ones. Smart advice from the BBB not to give out candy so I don't need to worry about snacking on it before and after Halloween:tongue5:!
Since DD just turned a year, she's upstairs sleeping and will have to wait until next year to trick-or-treat and tell me which treats were her favorites. What have been the best things your kids have gotten? What did you find among their stash that you would love to have gotten, too? Any really cool yard/ front step/ home decorations? How about great costumes that you saw and could share with us?

Saturday night, full moon, candy, an extra hour of sleep.... all adds up to a

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

[schums]

We give out individual packets of Kool-aid, and the kids from toddlers to teens seem to like it. It's sugar free, caffine free, gluten free and allergen free. Any you can make play-doh out of it if you don't like the artifical colors.

ETA: I mean the little envelopes of Kool-aid that you mix with sugar/whatever and water in a pitcher.

We set up a graveyard in the front yard with tombstones with funny sayings, and we get lots of comments about that. Although we need to make some new ones for next year.

[elephantmeg]

DH's favorite was the popcorn balls-we went to a neighbors where he had ToT'd when he was little (we live next to where he grew up). They were thrilled to see him and he was thrilled to see his favorite popcorn balls. DD loved the shaped marshmellows from the IL's. Mommy so far has stayed out of it. I did take a PB cookie at a friend's house though and 2 mini twix at the apple butter making :)

[SnuggleBuggles]

We give out individual packets of Kool-aid, and the kids from toddlers to teens seem to like it. It's sugar free, caffine free, gluten free and allergen free. Any you can make play-doh out of it if you don't like the artifical colors.


LOL. :) When ds1 came back from ToT'in with dh I asked ds how he did. He told me to pick up his bag and I said it was pretty heavy. I said it wasn't as heavy as back in my day when annoying people would give us cans of soda. Dh said that he got two drinks though and sure enough they were adding to the weight. They were the Kool-Aid ones.


I tried to reserve my Goldfish/ Play-Doh/ sticker basket for my littlest ToT'ers but one group of kids of mixed ages practically cleaned me out by being greedy. I was not happy. I had told them that the little kids could pick from there but the older ones needed to pick from my candy bowl. It'd have been fine if there were allergies involved but they were grabbing from both bowls. I hate that.

Most everyone else was very polite. No stand out costumes this year. Our friends turned their garage into a haunted house. I saw it this afternoon while they putting the finishing touches on it. My guess is that it was pretty creepy!

Beth

[WatchingThemGrow]

HUGE MISS: We'd just gotten home from the airport, having some dinner and the doorbell rings. I run out to explain, "Sorry, we just got home. We don't have any candy." (Lame, I know, but we weren't planning on being home tonight.) One of the two moms says, "Ok, that's fine. Hope you don't mind. She had to relieve herself." The other mom is helping her daughter PEE next to our walkway. It has been more than three hours and I still can't believe it.

Really... PEEing at someone's door is okay now??????????

[LarsMal]

We went ToT in our new neighborhood tonight, so I didn't had out candy (won't be moving in until next week). We met some nice new neighbors and lots of little kids. That was a big hit for me!! There was one house that was all decked out with great decorations and a smoke machine. It was pretty cool.

I had to laugh at one man who was handing out candy and told the kids to hold on. He put what looked like a popcorn bag in their bags and said, "Here, this one is easier on the teeth." When we got back in the car I looked at it and it was a popcorn ball (prepackaged). I had to laugh because I thought it was funny that the sugary, hard ball of popcorn was "easier on the teeth" :)

Overall it was a great night. Baby C was a trooper, M wore her Madeline costume and people actually knew who she was, and L was so proud of his Batman costume. No misses that I can think of!

[LarsMal]

HUGE MISS: We'd just gotten home from the airport, having some dinner and the doorbell rings. I run out to explain, "Sorry, we just got home. We don't have any candy." (Lame, I know, but we weren't planning on being home tonight.) One of the two moms says, "Ok, that's fine. Hope you don't mind. She had to relieve herself." The other mom is helping her daughter PEE next to our walkway. It has been more than three hours and I still can't believe it.

Really... PEEing at someone's door is okay now??????????


Say whaaaaat?!?!?! :eek: That's crazy!

[SnuggleBuggles]

HUGE MISS: We'd just gotten home from the airport, having some dinner and the doorbell rings. I run out to explain, "Sorry, we just got home. We don't have any candy." (Lame, I know, but we weren't planning on being home tonight.) One of the two moms says, "Ok, that's fine. Hope you don't mind. She had to relieve herself." The other mom is helping her daughter PEE next to our walkway. It has been more than three hours and I still can't believe it.

Really... PEEing at someone's door is okay now??????????


:47:What?!!! That is absolutely insane!!!

Beth

[ourbabygirl]

OMG- relieving herself at your front doorstep- that has to take the cake! And it was a GIRL, not a BOY! (Not that it's o.k. for a boy to do it either!)
So sorry you had to deal with that:shake:!

[Fairy]

HUGE MISS: We'd just gotten home from the airport, having some dinner and the doorbell rings. I run out to explain, "Sorry, we just got home. We don't have any candy." (Lame, I know, but we weren't planning on being home tonight.) One of the two moms says, "Ok, that's fine. Hope you don't mind. She had to relieve herself." The other mom is helping her daughter PEE next to our walkway. It has been more than three hours and I still can't believe it.

Really... PEEing at someone's door is okay now??????????

What, now? WHAT? No. Now, to be fair, there are reasons this could happen, like a just potty trained tot or a trainee not making it, and what are you going to do if they can't hold it, and it happens, and you feel terrible, and oh well. And my own DS had to go potty in the middle of a park in Charleston a few weeks ago with literally nowhere to go not even a portapotty, and we were up a creek and he could barely hold it, and so we left some DNA in the bushes. But what you describe sounds really questionable to me. In this situation where we're all ToT'ing and we know the drill, could she not have knocked and said, dude, it's an emergency, can we borrow your bathroom? I'm kind of floored.

[bubbaray]

I'm wearing my witch clothes. I swear, if anyone pees on my property, I will turn them into a toad.

NOT JOKING!

[Fairy]

HIT! -->
Well, considering that DS had a 103.5 fever and we thought for sure he was down for the week, let alone the day, he did quite well for the houses on our block we let him go to now that he's feeling better. For just our street, you'd think it would be few pieces of candy, but it was the entire BAG (ghost bag from PBK). I was like did we go around the block? No? Is this possible? So, he did well.

MISS --> We gave out the twizzlers/lemonheads/gummysavers/laffytaffy enormo bag from Costco. Which I dug into two weeks ago. As it happens, that's a popular choice, if only we had customers. We had maybe 12 or 13 visits, period. I couldn't believe it. And to think that I panicked and backed it up with two bags of Reeces! For the last few people, I had them dig in and take huge handfulls. Still, we're stuck wtih a sh*tload of candy.

MISS --> I don't know what the deal is, but enthusiasm for Halloween seems to be down tenfold this year. Alot fewer people decorated their homes, and that includes the wack people like me who go ALL OUT. I still decorated, but one family did positively nothing, which is unheard of for this family, another family didn't get their stuff out till yesterday, and this neighborhood just really gets into Halloween, and one dad and I were mentioning how noticeable it is. We think it has alot to do with the economy and just overally depression and being in the dumps. Another thing is that Halloween is on Saturday this year, and our town is in the HS football playoff game tonight. Stupid school, DON'T have games on Halloween! So, a ton of people weren't at home at all from what a friend in the neighborhood said (we only went to our street).

MISS --> DH now has whatever DS had last night and is walking around with the chills hot but freezing and a backache and can't sleep but can't stay up and is miserable. I made chicken soup from scratch and hope it will help.

What a weird Halloweenie.

[bubbaray]

Misses:
One boy: Can I have two? (answer: no)

Another boy: Can I have that candy (pointing to one in a bowl as he tries to grab it) (answer: no, you'll see what you get when you get home).

I guess manners have gone the way of the dodo bird....

[inmypjs]

We handed out Halloween rubber ducks (from Oriental Trading) and they were a big hit with both the little and big kids!

[Ceepa]

While we were out I saw these two cars pull over and about five 10-12 yos get out. They went up to several houses in front of us and started decimating the bowls that were left out. I tried to keep it to myself but when they hit the third house I started scolding them about proper Halloween manners and being greedy. I couldn't help myself. They got back into the cars and left.

[hellokitty]

Overall, ToT went well for us, no rude kids or anything weird, like little girls peeing on our lawn (?!?!?). I would say the biggest, "hit" in our neighborhood was DS2's costume. I made him a jellyfish costume and it turned out sooo cute! DH was grumbling that it looked, "girly," but geez, jellyfish are beautiful looking, so of course it's not going to look macho. At least I made it a blue jellyfish, not a pink one. He changed his tune pretty quickly though, b/c he took the older boys ToT and everyone kept commenting on how much they liked the jellyfish costume. I can kind of see why. I noticed that other than my son's jellyfish costume (DS1 was a bioncle and DS3 wore a pumpkin costume hand me down), NOBODY wore homemade costumes unless you count the teenagers who dressed up as zombie/serial killers (holey t-shirt, with fake blood splattered all over it, and carrying around a knife). I have to say, that I found it kind of disappointing that nobody tried to make their own costumes. Plus, every boy btwn the ages of 5-10 was a Star Wars character! I too noticed that nobody in our neighborhood went all out this yr. Usually, there are at least a few houses that go totally bonkers with their halloween decorations, but it was very low key this yr. The economy has hit our area really bad and I think that in general ppl just aren't in the mood for holiday type of things. I have to admit that we never even got around to carving our pumpkins, b/c we had such a busy wk and ToT (thursday), kind of crept up on us.

Oh and I tried to just give halloween themed pencils as our, 'treat' one yr and DH totally chewed me out for it. He told us that ppl would TP our house. So, I ended up giving the pencils AND some tootsie rolls. I wanted to give out those flavor-ice popsicles this yr and my DH went beserko on me and said that was a baaaad treat and stupid, b/c it wasn't candy and kids would be mad that they couldn't eat it right away (my kindergartener got a tube popsicle as a treat for his, "harvest" party at school and thought it was awesome). DH thinks that if it's not chocolate, then it's a sucky treat. I guess I am weird, b/c when I was a kid, I LOVED the non-edible treats. Pencils, erasers, little toys, etc.. I also didn't realize how much kids love chocolate, b/c I liked hard candy when I was kid and quite honestly never really liked chocolate until after I became a mom (I think it's a hormonal craving). So, I just always considered chocolate more of an adult candy. So, since DH threw such a fit, I told him to buy candy and he bought a big mixed bag of chocolate bars.

[infomama]

We had lots of fun TOTing.

Miss--I would like to see the religious poems and cards go. We get a couple of these each year and Dd1 comes to me all excited (like it's a coupon for something) and when I tell her it's a poem about church she says, 'Mom, we go to church on Sundays. Why are they telling you to take me to church on Sunday." It's a PITA and she is usually bummed for a sec. Another house always hands out Avon catalogs to the moms....ugh. I don't want any friggin Avon.

Hits- Our neighborhood is full of considerate kids...so nice. Lots of people but everyone shares the sidewalk and the kids are generally very polite.

I was so happy to see all the little pretzel bags this year. Lots of cute dogs in costume.

[desertmama]

Hit: DS made it through the night w/o an allergic reaction! :boogie: I was SO scared.

Miss: all of us are still recovering from the flu (no longer contagious but still not back to normal) so we just went to the very unimpressive carnival at our apt complex and I was pooped after only an hour.

Oh well, dd didn't seem to be disappointed and the above hit trumps the miss imo, so I'll count it a success!

[baymom]

HUGE MISS: We'd just gotten home from the airport, having some dinner and the doorbell rings. I run out to explain, "Sorry, we just got home. We don't have any candy." (Lame, I know, but we weren't planning on being home tonight.) One of the two moms says, "Ok, that's fine. Hope you don't mind. She had to relieve herself." The other mom is helping her daughter PEE next to our walkway. It has been more than three hours and I still can't believe it.

Really... PEEing at someone's door is okay now??????????

WHAT!!! That is out of control...and then to actually bring it to your attention, on top of that!! I'm outraged for you! :angry-smiley-005:

[baymom]

We went around our neighborhood first and it was the best part of the evening. Most of our neighbors are retired and adore having kids to 'bring life to the street' and went way overboard with compliments and treats. The kids were BEAMING and just kept saying 'thank you' to everyone. One women was going to a party and wouldn't have been home, but came over to give both kids gift bags of goodies. Can I just say that we have the NICEST neighbors in the world. :-)

Then, we went to our town's designated "safe streets" (blocked off, so no cars) and it was a mad house. Waaay too many people, yucky candy I don't want them to eat, ect. But, the kids really liked admiring other childrens' costumes, the festive-ness of it, and running into friends, so I guess it was good.

[srhs]

Not sure this fits the thread's theme, but my HIT is the PICS I got of my boys in their matching costumes. You know, with a baby and a 1yo, I don't think I've caught my breath in 2 months. They are both asleep now, and I keep looking at the photos and videos and thinking they are so stinkin cute and we are so blessed. <content sigh>

ETA--Can't believe I almost forgot this......
So we are visiting my parents and in spite of me having 2 conversations with my mom about why I don't want DS1 to have juice (and her pretending to agree), DH found her giving him a juicebox this morning and commented "Oh, so glad you're not" me. I was CRAZY mad but decided 2 could play the passive aggressive game. I dug through the cabinets to find the hidden juiceboxes, put them in her candy bowl, and gave them all out to her trick-or-treaters!!!! :ROTFLMAO: Think she'll ASK where they went tomorrow?

[elektra]

Hits: Just about everything! We went to the cul de sac behind our street and there were tons of kids out. I have gotten to know some of my neighbors since last year and so it was fun to feel more a part of the neighborhood.
DD was Lilo and DS was Stitch and more people figured it out than I thought. DD looked ridiculous but very cute in her big black wig.
It was warm enough for DD to start out in her tank top but cool enough for DS not to roast in his furry Stitch outfit.

Misses:
-Me just being uptight about getting dinner done, getting pictures and get out and back between darkness and DS's feeding time/bedtime.
It all worked out though. :)
- My mom getting confused in the dark and not trusting my dad and me to lead her in the right direction.

[SnuggleBuggles]

While we were out I saw these two cars pull over and about five 10-12 yos get out. They went up to several houses in front of us and started decimating the bowls that were left out. I tried to keep it to myself but when they hit the third house I started scolding them about proper Halloween manners and being greedy. I couldn't help myself. They got back into the cars and left.

:thumbsup: Good for you!!

Beth

[himom]

ETA--Can't believe I almost forgot this......
So we are visiting my parents and in spite of me having 2 conversations with my mom about why I don't want DS1 to have juice (and her pretending to agree), DH found her giving him a juicebox this morning and commented "Oh, so glad you're not" me. I was CRAZY mad but decided 2 could play the passive aggressive game. I dug through the cabinets to find the hidden juiceboxes, put them in her candy bowl, and gave them all out to her trick-or-treaters!!!! :ROTFLMAO: Think she'll ASK where they went tomorrow?

I love this!!!! You are a woman after my own heart. :hysterical: