Halloween was in-SANE at the Zoot house last night. Last year, after 1 hour we had exhausted our 10lbs of candy. We were warned there would be a lot of kids, but we didn’t quite understand what “a lot” meant until we were standing at the door for 20 minutes straight as the kids Just. Kept. Coming. We turned off the lights when we ran out of candy and didn’t bothering paying attention to the trick-or-treating that may or may not have continued after we quit participating. We kinda just assumed that this year, if we got the same amount of candy but only gave ONE piece per kid, we’d survive the night.
We were wrong. We lasted ONE HOUR.
If you think the rain deters kids from trick-or-treating? You are wrong. We were even being stingy this time and we still didn’t last longer than an hour. We were only giving 1-2 pieces tops, but by 7pm we had to turn off the lights and quit. This didn’t phase us too much until MrZ ventured out 30 minutes later to get LilZ from his friend’s house. MrZ called me 15 minutes after he left and said, “I just now made it out of the neighborhood. It’s a madhouse out there.”
I looked out the window and there were kids EVERYWHERE. I was so bummed to know we were missing out on all the fun, but seriously, what could we do? Hand out nuts and bolts from the garage? Kleenexes? Toothpicks? I’m thinking that even if we doubled our candy supply, we would still not have lasted through the entire night. Our neighborhood knows how to do Halloween – that’s for damn sure. Where part of me wants to try to compete better next year, the other part of me doesn’t want to have to take out a second mortgage to buy enough candy to feed the entire city of Huntsville.
But I don’t mind selling a few non-vital organs…
We live in a neighborhood where a lot of executives from the distribution company in our town live, and they give out cans of pop and full size candy bars, etc. So, we get people from all over town who drive their kids out to our ‘hood for trick-or-treating, sometimes having reached upwards of 600 tricker-or-treaters in 2 hours of time.
I get tattoos and bracelets from Oriental Trading post. My in-laws, who used to live in our house, spent $300 giving out pudding cups.
I love it and at the same time, it gets pretty damn expensive especially when the majority of the kids coming to the door live 4 miles away.
It was crazy where we were at too. Lots of people everywhere! We were worried about the rain, but thankfully it stopped because otherwise we would have had a disappointed witch and scarecrow.
You can probably guess what I had for breakfast!
ZERO.
Check this out.. someone in our neighborhood must have cleaned out a closet as I saw her handing out stuffed animals to all the kids. Mine got a 1980 Belkie Bear (from Belk’s department store).
That sounds just like the Halloween’s I remember from being a kid! I grew up in a very large housing development with hundreds of kids and we would come home with at least one pillowcase, sometimes more, full of candy.
I was very disappointed yesterday when I was handing out candy at a friend’s house and they had a total of 15 kids (and one adorable dog) come by. It did mean we have lots of candy leftover, though!
you’re so lucky. we got ZERO Trick-or-treaters at our house last night. My husb was also very bummed, as we used to live in a very T-o-T oriented neighborhood and everyone really got into it. this year, however, none of our neighrbors appeared to be home, adn since we live in a court and the other three houses were dark as night, not a single soul ventured to our very well lit and welcoming house. Now I’m feasting on two “value sized” bags of reese’s cups and Kit-Kats. Damn kids!!!!!!
We had one set of kids. And we’ve got a hell of a lot of candy left over.
We only got to pass out candy for a little bit since I had to work and Josh had school. However, I did notice that the neighbors across the street and down a few houses really go all out. Every so often, one of the people at that house would run out with a revving chainsaw and scare the kids. They would all scatter screaming. It was awesome. This was our first year in our house and I can’t wait until next year. Although, next year we’ll have a baby to take out so I don’t know how much candy we’ll pass out then either.
My neighborhood sucks. I vented on my blog.
My neighborhood sucks. I vented earlier on my blog.
I read somewhere that the average household spends $47 each year on Halloween candy alone.
I wish we could have participated. We live in an apartment complex, and had NO trick or treaters. Sad.
My kids went trick or treating 3 times. There has got to be some kind of way to get this Halloween thing under control. We have enough candy to supply a third world country!
I sat with my 10lbs waiting for some kidlets. All I got was 2 groups of teens, one of which didn’t even dress up.
One of our neighbors said she bought 15 bags of candy and by 8pm she was completely out of candy. No way am I spending that much money on candy. That’s just crazy.
Wow! My neighbors are mostly older retired folks, so I might get a total of eight knocks on the door on Halloween. Now, I don’t wish your your problem, but I wouldn’t mind a few more …
We had two yes 2 trick-or-treaters…I can send you my left over candy!
I bought no candy and turned out all the lights and watched a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movie. Best Halloween I ever had!
My son’s daycare lady (home-based daycare) spends over $200 each Halloween on candy. We went to their neighborhood to t-o-t (so that she could see my son in his costume) and there was a LINE of cars to turn into it. A gravel patch at the intersection was like a parking lot.
I spent about $10 on candy and nobody came to the door. Now I don’t know what to do with the candy. I don’t freakin’ want it! Do you think it’ll keep until next year?
You know I understand where you’re coming from. Our first year living here, Kyle made 4 additional trips during the night to buy candy, and we made it to about 9pm.
Last year, we pre-made 200 individual trat bags and lasted til about 8:30.
This year? We bought 3 bags of candy, and made it til about 7, when Tyler got grumpy and the kids were taller than my husband, and I said FORGET IT! 🙂
Next year, we’re taking Tyler, so that WE can enjoy the 500 billion other Trick or Treaters in the area. 🙂
There’s a nickel lady in our neighborhood. That’s what the kids know her as. She upgraded from pennies to nickels this year. We’re in the big time now.
I’ve got a secret for candy (my mother’s house had 200 this year..that’s where we set up Operation: Halloween). The secret is to buy a little each week. Candy starts being sold almost six weeks before Halloween starts. But BEFORE I see the candy go on sale for Halloween, I start buying (so, basically, about 6 weeks ahead of time). Wait to buy the chocolate until a few weeks ahead, buy the lollipops and hard candies first. By the time Halloween comes around you’ll only have to buy a few bags of chocolate. You may shell out forty bucks, but spread over six weeks it doesn’t seem like it.
I’m trying this new tactic on Christmas too, to see if it’s less painful. SO FAR, it’s working. We’ll see how it goes the closer we get!