A Halloweenie MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s almost Halloweenie! I was reminiscing with Mr Rebo about how it was back in the ancient times – our childhood. :slight_smile: I remember my brother and I leaving the house at dusk with empty pillow cases, and coming home some hours later lugging ten or fifteen pounds of candy – half a pillowcase full! Our parents never worried about us being out. We were allowed to run wild and free! In the summertime, I remember staying outside all day (how did we handle the 100° temperatures??) and only coming in for meals. Then back outside to play freezetag or hide-and-go-seek until Dad would flick the porch light on and off to call us inside for the night.

When it was time for my son to go trick-or-treating, times had changed somewhat. I walked the neighborhood with him, hanging back on the street while he rang doorbells for candy. Sometimes I had to remind him to say thank you, but most of the time he was polite! Halloween was different as a parent. I couldn’t imagine letting him loose to run around like we maniacs did. That’s kinda sad, but on the other hand I got to watch his excitement first hand!

These days, I like to decorate the front doorway a little bit, to let the trick-or-treaters know I’m participating. I only give out good “fun-sized” candy bars – not crap like those black and orange wax paper wrapped nasty chews. (My husband likes those! <gag>) I fuss at the teenagers who don’t have costumes, and coo over the little ones. I give candy to all comers, though. The hardest part is my three dogs barking! I have two ways to get to the front door, and it’s a pain to block the front door off from them. They scare people, for some reason! :wink:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2

First?

Will come back with memories in the morning, you know, from work. :slight_smile:

3

I love Halloween, though being from Buffalo we often had to wear our winter coats over our costumes! One year it even snowed.

From when I was five until seven or so I wore my bubblegum pink flower-girl dress and was a princess each Halloween and Queen Esther every Purim. I loved that dress!

4

Howdy all. Nice OP Rebo! Hallowe’en has only recently become a popular thing in Australia, so I only really did it once. I was 7 years old and we were touring Canada and the US in a van with a pop-up camper (5 months in a confined space with 4 kids under the age of 12 - my parents must have been insane!). We spent Hallowe’en in a camping ground / caravan / RV park. I don’t even remember what my costume was. I just remember all the folks being so excited to have little kids trick-or-treating in the park!

5

I too remember being out all night long on Halloween. I would trick or treat for miles and had enough candy to last me through Easter.

Alas, once my kids were old enough to trick or treat, we had to go out with them. We tended to hang back a few feet and my kids were polite as well. They always said thank you.

I only give out good candy on Halloween. I hated those nasty brown and black things too. I tend to give out chocolate bars (Hersheys, KitKats, Milky Ways, etc., smarties, and tootsie pops. Smarties are my favorite. The Reese’s peanut butter cups are hubby’s favorite, so I always have to buy a bag for him.

Now that my kids are much too old to trick or treat, we make them give the candy out when the little ghouls come to our door. Our soon makes himself up like a scarecrow and sits out in a chair on our front porch. He’s scared grown-ups because he sits there like a stuffed something or another and doesn’t move or say a word until the trick or treaters are reaching for the candy in the big bowl on his lap. He won’t scare the wee ones, but he has fun with the older kids and the adults.

I spent the evening cleaning, slicing and sauteeing chanterelle mushrooms. I had about four pounds, but they reduce quite a bit during the cooking process. At any rate, I’ll have enough to stick in the freezer for the Christmas Day meal and maybe three or four other meals. I haven’t bagged them yet, so I’m not sure.

Speaking of that, I’ll need to get those bagged up now and get them in the freezer.

6

I remember one year… my brother and I must have gone out for hours on end. Mom went with us for the further parts, but we hit up a lot on our own.

We ended up with a pillowcase and a half each. So much candy we had some stuff the following Halloween still (mainly lollipops and the like)! That year we got cans of pop and full size chocolate bars… hit up the trailer park as well as the Halloween fair at the leisure centre. We must have gone to half the town.

So far I’ve only taken Velociraptor out to the mall. He’s small, though this year we might wander to some houses this time. Its hard to tell where to go in our neighbourhood though, as few kids come to our house (so Mom tells me) and there doesn’t seem to be many out.

I had thought of going to Boo at the Zoo this year, but that seems to be a no go. I had also wanted to hit the big haunted houses at COP, and that is also a no go. But there is a haunted house on the corner, where the video store used to be. Last night was its first night, so I plan to walk over in the next couple of nights and check it out.

7

Is it Monday already?

Frickin’ Kee-ryste!

I know I don’t keep up as much as I should these days, so I will indulge all you marvelous kids with a taste of beebs’ own TMI.
Stand-by for a Halloween tale, about a tweenie-tiny beebs.

8

I, well, my mother was never the most creative with Halloween costumes. When you’re only nine how can you complain? I couldn’t make or buy my own. One year she just decided that my brother and I should dress up in our Lazer-Tag vests and helmets, then we could be dressed as the “Lazer-Taggers”!

Another year, the year this story tales place, I got to dress up as THE BALLOON MONSTER! What’s a Balloon Monster? Apperently it’s just a kid in old clothes with about twenty inflated balloons taped to him. Rawr. Great, because an hour later after my Mom, brother and I started our little candy march I had become THE DEFLATED MONSTER, because every other kid would inevitably run up to me and just pop them. Kids + masks = mean.

In fact, looking back this is probably how I developed my irrational fear of balloons. I hate them. I can’t blow them up, and I dread watching clowns make balloon animals. I have lot’s of weird irrational fears though. Not just things like spiders either. Lot’s of people are scared of spiders even though they understand that most of them are harmless. But how many people can say they’re scared of things like umbrellas?! Huh? Huh? I thought so.

Anyways, the night of tricker-treating was wearing down so the Deflated Balloon Monster, the Pretty Princess (my brother was odd), and my Mom were all headed home with our plastic pumpkins full of delicious candies. But I had to pee. “We’re almost home, you can hold it.” But I had to pee. “We’re on our street.” But I had to pee NOW. “Fine, go into the woods, I’ll hold your candy.”

What?

“Go into the woods, I’ll hold your candy.”

I’m not letting go of my plastic pumpkin full of Snickets and M&M’s.

“Fine, just go into the woods, we’ll wait out here.”

Don’t ask me how, because it was dark, and I really can’t remember, but I somehow managed to expel my stream of urine directly into my plastic pumpkin full of candy. Well, not completely, I also got plenty of it on my hands and pants as I was trying to fumble my way through all the deflated latex around my zipper.

That year our haul of candy was immediately halved. There was no salavging mine, so my brother was forced into sharing his. I think he took this personally, and subconsciously he got revenge a year later on Easter. But that, kids, is a story for another day.

9

OMG, how do you follow that?! Poor Beebs … and his poor brother! It’s a wonder you don’t have a full blown neurosis about balloons, though. :smiley:

Wonderful reminscient OP, Rebo. I remember trick-or-treating but my parents never let us go very far. There was one neighbor who used to make popcorn balls, but we never got any because they were always out by the time we got there. My best friend, however, would traipse all over town with her older brother, get huge bags of candy, then hoard it all, eating only a piece or two each day. She did that with her Easter candy too … and in fact, I think she probably had Halloween candy left by the time Easter rolled around.

I am up and caffeinating…that’s about all I can report right now. Oh yeah, good to see ya, Dotty! Hope HRH is doing okay.

10

Blurf.

11

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’ before another excitatin’ week of learnin’ all about mobile phones.

Hallowe’en is also JoeDawg’s birthday. He’ll be fourteen on Firday.

We trick or treated all over our side of town growin’ up. This is a small town so that was all of about three miles but we’d get a good candy haul, which was the point of the whole thing so that was good. We used brown paper bags instead of pillow cases though. Where I grew up, we trick or treated from the ages of wee small tykes through age eleven. It was an unwritten rule that at age twelve one was too big to trick or treat. Thus, I do have a problem with teenagers trick or treatin’. It’s a kiddie thing.

FTR, I never peed in my candy. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the great OP Rebo!

Ok, off in search of more caffiene and brekkies.

Later Y’all!

12

Morning!

Zooming by on my way to work…

Nice story, beebs. You never disappoint.:smiley:

13

Nice post, beebs. Brought a smile to my morning.

Morning all, let’s all be careful out there, ok?

14

I think I went with my parents until I was about eight or nine. We lived in a very safe neighbouhood, and my parents didn’t want to walk as far as I did, in search of more candy. I stopped trick or treating in (mutter, mutter) tenth grade. With Muppet! She did it too!
I think we’ll dress Nat up and take him out at least to my work, so they can coo. Still working on the question of whether it’s extremely offensive to take him out if we’re obviously eating all the candy. :smiley:

15

Are you sure he’s your husband. I’m completly convinced that only aliens like the wax paper candies, circus peanuts, and malted milk balls. You’d better check him out.

A woman after my own heart.

Candy corn rules.

16

I thought those were ‘bite me’ sized…

:smiley:

Blurf.

17

Ok… For my halloween reminiscing… Honestly, I seem to have very little recollection of childhood so I don’t know for sure that my parents accompanied me, but I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have. Our area is semi-rural and people have fairly long (200-300 ft) driveways so we don’t see too many beggars. I guess they figure it just isn’t worth the walk.

A couple of years ago my mom and I went to Hershey on a mini-vacation. They had trick or treating going on there in Chocolate World. It was very cool. We got to sit there eating our hot fudge chocolate cake sundaes and watch all the cute little kids go by. Speaking of Hershey, that was my best costume ever, I dressed up as a Hershey’s Kiss!
Ok, I guess I should get back to work. Right?

18

I stopped dressing up for Halloween… uh… I don’t think i have stopped. I dressed up last year, and I was seven months pregnant.

I also hate teenagers that don’t dress up and still expect candy.

19

Hey, me too! I never had a trauma such as yours (that I remember), but I have a fear of all sudden loud noises (such as balloons popping), and it’s turned into a full-fledged, completely irrational fear of all balloons. Glad to know I’m not alone since everyone else seems to think they’re the Most Fun Ever!!!1!!!11!!!

Halloween… well, like somebody else said - can’t find the post again now… sheesh - I had a flower girl gown that I wore for years to be a princess. I liked that. But other than that, I really didn’t like Halloween. I was too shy as a kid to be comfortable going up to people’s houses, and I was an only child so I didn’t have siblings to go with me. Plus, we lived in the country so it wasn’t like there were neighborhood kids to go with either. So I wasn’t a fan. Then after the flower-girl-princess years I never had costumes I liked so the whole thing felt awkward and uncomfortable with other kids judging my less-than-inspired costumes. I stopped dressing up as soon as I as old enough not to have to participate in the school Halloween parade.

Now I’m the curmudgeonly adult to turns off all her lights and sits in the dark on Halloween so all the little rug rats leave me alone. It’s possibly my least favorite holiday. Or maybe second to the 4th of July… see note above about irrational fear of noises, like, oh say fireworks/firecrackers.

Flutter, I haven’t seen you in a while! How was the Disney trip? (Yeah, you probably posted about it but I missed it… I get behind sometimes.) Anyway, glad you stopped by again.

I made baklava yesterday! It turned out quite well if I do say so myself. I have pictures if I can figure out how to upload them here at work. Otherwise I’ll have pics tomorrow.

We also planted some bulbs over the weekend - tulips and daffodils and iris. I’m really excited to see how they look in the spring. No pics of those for probably 6 months!

20

They bug me too.

I dresed up when I went trick or treating at age [sub]mumble19mumble[/sub]. I got the ‘you’re too old for this’ from the time I was nine on, so I went on and defied them all!

I’ve been crazy busy, so I haven’t been posting at all lately. Disney was awesome, we hit up all four parks and Cocoa Beach and got in some shopping.

Just before our dollar started to tank.