Jeff's Lunchbreak: Halloween Recap 2009

Jack O'Lantern I grew up in the country. Halloween for me was getting in the car, and driving around to friends' houses. A few friends lived on streets with enough houses that we could go up and down a bit, but not very much. This also meant that we were never visited by many trick or treaters, nor were the houses I knocked at, so I always got an entire handful of candy at every place I visited, and we always had plenty of left over candy at our house.

As I've gotten older, I've moved into progressively more urban environments, so I've gotten used to the more traditional Halloween. However, nothing prepared me for what to expect in the neighborhood I live in now. Somehow, the neighborhood has acquired a reputation as the place to go for trick or treaters. Our first year in the neighborhood, we were completely unprepared, and ran out of candy very early on. Last year, we did a bit better, but still ran out before the crowds had died down. This year, we were prepared. We started stocking up on candy about two months ago, so that we'd have enough to go around.

We still rationed our candy. For most of the night, we gave out between 2 and 3 pieces per kid. Only after 9:00 did we start to give out a bit more, around half a dozen pieces per kid. We ran out around 9:30.

Anyway, I weighed the candy at the start of the night, to have an idea of how much candy we gave away - 40 lbs. That's a bit of a rough estimate. I didn't subtract the weight of the plastic container, and a few kids we had over divied up the last dregs before we had a chance to give them away, but we also had a few people over who dumped in a few bags of candy after I did the initial weigh in. Anyway, it was a lot of sugar and chocolate.

I have no idea how many kids actually came by, but a family in another house on our street who had bought 1600 pieces of candy (rationed at 2 pieces per kid, i.e. 800 kids worth), ran out at 8:30. So, I'd guess that we had somewhere around a thousand kids come trick or treating at our house.

For the most part, it was fun. We decorated the house up pretty good, hung a plastic monster from a tree branch so that we could drop it on unsuspecting passers-by, and I dressed up like the grim reaper, scaring quite a few older kids and adults.

We did get a few teenagers in less than creative costumes, and around 10:30, when I went to see some friends out to their car and turned the porch light back on, a car immediately pulled up to our house hoping for candy. But, like I said, everything was fun for the most part.

Anyway, in addition to the jack o'lantern picture up above, here are a few more pictures of how we decorated the house. We didn't think to take any the night before in the dark, so these are all from the next morning. They're not quite as spooky, but at least they give a sense of what the house looked like.

Entryway

Hippy Bus

Hippy Bus Michael Meyers

Updated 2009-11-05: Two new pictures added

Comments

Sounds like you guys had fun. Is that your VW Bus? My first car was a '73 Bus, I loved it.

Posted by: Eric Jones | November 15, 2009 9:45 AM

Yup. That's our bus. We went to a garage sale back in July, and it was out in the backyard with a for sale sign in the windshield. It needed a new battery and gas lines, but that was it. We like it a lot. Hopefully I'll get some time to fix it up a little, but I'm not planning on doing a show room quality restoration.

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