Time for the weenie roast and hayride!
Is that Royce with the big pink … mace? 
djm
it aint lichen, that’s fer sure
Ok, ok…to ratchet the fright level down a few notches:
You can come trick or treat at my house!
2 girls at college, one watching scary movies at a friend’s house, the kid in the other room absorbed by Guild Wars–with special H’ween features, and el esposo out of town, it’s feeling a little lonely! (the dog who likes to lunge ferociously at the door will be let out of Olivia’s bedroom later.) Weird. A very few years ago my kids would have been scrambling to get their costumes together.
I’m going to have to lose the hat, I’m afraid, as it’s freaking out my cat.
Skeleton earrings too small to see. Dang.
In twenty minutes they’ll be here! We’ve not got such lovely preparations made as emmline, but we do have two little pumpkins on the porch and the light on and a big bowl of candy----good candy, Reese’s peanut butter cups, Kit Kats, mmmm. My kitties know something is up and can’t settle down. Happy Halloween!
I bought a bunch of goodies earlier today to give out in case we got some trick-or-treaters, but my 17-year-old stepdaughter and her boyfriend grabbed them and ate everything as soon as they came home this afternoon. Now I’ve got 12 kids ringing the doorbell (we’ve never had trick-or-treaters in the 4 years I’ve lived here!) and I have NOTHING to give them!!!
We had a pumpkin on the front porch… until some malicious git smashed it all over the road in front of the house. 
But, we’ll be handing out candy (and small toys), anyway. Happy Halloween! 
I’m pretty low key compared to some folks around here. So far the TorT head count has been low. Brad–wish I could send you extra M&Ms.
You better turn off your lights and look not-home, which is what I’ll do before 9 when the adult-sized-kids-who-should-really-know-better start turning up.
Man, I hate it when that happens! Gonna turn out all the lights and huddle silently, or brazen it out by giving them canned goods, or granola bars?
I just lit the candle in the jack-o-lantern…too rural here to get any trick-or-treat posses, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Two! Count’em. Two kids. I bought enough for fifty. I took all the leftovers to a friend’s house (who went ballistic as they had enough left over for an army themselves). At least its all out of my reach.
djm
We had a pretty good turn-out here. There were sure a lot of swords and sickles and wands which were not under very good control when the wielders were picking out their candy. There was a really cute bumblebee named Grace and a very timid little Mickey Mouse and a fellow that had an amazing mask that blood suddenly spurted through when he did something special. I really hollered when I saw that one 
and apparently I made his day. We have quite a lot of candy left over. The blue-wrapped Almond Joy’s seemed the least popular. I’m going to sneak down now and get my little stash of leftovers together since my husband is taking it all to work tomorrow morning to get it out of the house. And yeah, any peanut butter cups that are still there are mine!!!
We only had 15 kids. And it wasn’t raining or snowing or windy - just cold with temperatures in the 20 degree F range.
Good thing I bought candy that we all like. 
We’ll have dessert for quite a while.
Awww… Everybody likes Candy!!! I love Halloween!
The adult size kids around here come early, when all the little ones come!
We had a good turn-out on our street. the costumes this year were especially imaginative and excellent. We have a neighbor who puts on a haunted garage, so there’s a pretty good draw of older trick-or-treaters, some taller than moi!!! (5’10")
I always buy bags of candy especially for our family!
And this is the first year since our kids were old enough to trick-or-treat that none of them went out… 
M
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6104514.stm
Calne’s just down the road a tad from Swindon. When “Trick or Treat” crossed the pond a while ago, the local yobbery soon latched on to the premise of demanding money and/or goods with menaces.
It’s strange really. On this side of the great divide, parents spend 364 days of the year telling kids never to talk to strangers or to take sweets from strangers, but on the evening of the 31st October boot the blighters out of the house in the dark and tell 'em to go and do both.
Bit like Guy Fawkes Night, which is only a few days away… all year spent teaching kiddiwinks not to play with fire or matches, and then on that one night, shoving red-hot bits of fiery metal into a terrified child’s hands while insisting it’s “fun”. Strange.
I usually sit on the front porch in some kind of renaissance-themed costume playing the whistle.
Highlight of the evening: A very nice lady escorting about six 7ish-year-old kids showed up, and asked me to keep playing–I usually stop so I can say “happy halloween” and “your welcome” and the other socially necessary conversation. Anyway, she stood up there near the candy bowl listening, making the kids she was escorting have to crowd past her to get the candy one at a time…when they were all done, she actually looked torn about staying to listen to me and going with them to the next house. She finally said “Well…I guess I have to go..” and went back down the front walk, looking over her shoulder occasionally as she went. What a hoot! 
My favorite trick-or-treaters are the shy 2-4 year olds who are just a little overwhelmed by the whole affair
I noticed this year, there were few kids saying “Trick or treat!”…usually it was “Happy halloween” Did I miss some kind of political correctness purging of the threat of a trick?
The article says “A number of small fires were lit and fireworks set off. Eggs were thrown at police, buildings, cars and passers-by.”
Wow, that’s pretty tame. When I was a kid in the 1960s in the suburbs north of New York City, Halloween was scary and violent – in addition to eggs, shaving cream, etc. kids threw rocks and bricks and sprayed Nair at other kids (a chemical used to remove hair from women’s legs). And sick people were putting razor blades into the cupcakes that they gave out to trick-or-treaters. It was that kind of stuff that killed Halloween.
Nearly every incident of candies being tampered with, pins or razor blades in apples, etc. in this town have occurred on my street … well, for at least as long as I’ve lived here, anyway.
djm
I’m glad everyone had a nice or semi nice Halloween. My wife worked and I went over to my inlaws to wash some clothes since my washer is broken. No trick-or-treaters.
NEVER MIND
Bradhurley Dude! You should have parcelled out her CDs and other stuff to the trick or treaters as compensation.