Tag: halloween

Halloween Debriefing

On By LynnIn TurtleHead1 Comment

Last night’s trick-or-treating was, I think, a complete success. The kids had fun, and weren’t too cold or too worn out after their hour outside. They brought home a nice haul of candy but not to the point of gluttony, and with a surprisingly small percentage that Captain Jelly Belly can’t eat. So all good!

Is it me, though, or is trick-or-treating just not the same as it was when we were kids? I remember the first kids ringing my mom’s bell at 5:30 (and her cursing about it, declaring it much too early) and older kids still coming around as late as 9 (again, with much cursing by my mother). When I was young we’d be out working the streets with our dad for at least a couple of hours; meanwhile, at home, my mom would hand out candy to upwards of 250 kids, sometimes resorting to apples from the fruit cellar or raisins from the cupboard to replenish her inventory.

This year, our kids went out at around 6:15, and they were one of the first out on the street. When I put Little Miss Sunshine to bed at around 6:40, we still hadn’t heard a single ding-dong at the door. In the end I would guess we saw maybe 40 or 50 kids at our house at the most, and the last kids to come by rang the bell at 7:35.

That leaves us with a LOT of leftover candy. Not that I’m complaining. My thighs might be complaining, though, in a few days, from straining to fit into my jeans.

It’s All About The Sugar

On By LynnIn TurtleHead5 Comments

Happy Halloween!

I’ve been baking.

Yesterday I made two dozen of these for Captain Jelly Belly’s Halloween party:

Pumpkin cookies

They look really impressive, but actually they kind of taste like slightly sugary air. No flavour whatsoever. Plus they were a pain in the ass to make — the dough was very finicky and supervising the cutting out of shapes almost gave me a coronary. So I’m not sure how often I’ll be making these again. I hear they were a big hit at the party, though.

For Gal Smiley’s party, I made two dozen of these:

Pumpkin cupcakes

That’s a pumpkin-shaped marshmallow on top of the cupcakes. The marshmallows are simultaneously disgusting and highly addictive. Plus, despite their small size, they contain about 100 teaspoons of sugar. Probably the closest thing to child crack I’ve ever found. The ones I sent to school also had orange and black sprinkles on them, but I didn’t put any on these ones because they bother the Captain. Needless to say we didn’t get any leftovers sent home after the party.

I actually made these same cupcakes (but half chocolate, and all with sprinkles) for the little kids on our street last week. Captain Jelly Belly and Gal Smiley helped make them and decorate them, then we put one cupcake each in these little Halloween take-out containers I found at Michaels:

Trick Or Treat Box

Then we went for a little walk along the street and left the boxes with whatever neighbouring kids we knew. It was very fun and everyone was very excited to get them and I think a new tradition has been born. Maybe we will do it again on Valentine’s Day, too.

This afternoon we’ll be doing some last minute pumpkin carving, then we’ll be getting ready for trick-or-treating. The Captain will be going as Darth Vader. Gal Smiley will be a white kitty cat (as she has been every day for the past three weeks).

Little Miss Sunshine will be going to bed early.

The Captain has been feeling a little iffy about trick-or-treating this year since his allergies mean that he can’t eat at least half of the candy he rakes in. We offered to let him swap anything he gets that he can’t eat for something we have here, since all the candy we’ll be giving out is safe for him.

This morning Sir Monkeypants suggested I go out and buy a few more bags of candy, just so that we have lots of selection here for the Captain to choose from, to make him feel better about the swapping and feel like he got a bunch of different stuff. So after my Mommy And Baby swim class with Little Miss Sunshine, I went over to the WalMart to get some extra candy.

I was there a few weeks ago buying our stuff and they had SO much candy, aisles and aisles of it, with a whole extra section containing a million boxes of chips piled from floor to ceiling. A lot of their stuff was safe for the Captain because it was all extremely cheap crap, made up of sugar, artificial flavours and colours, and glue — ideal for him because when there’s no natural ingredients, there’s a low chance of allergens.

I seem to remember in years past picking up cheap Halloween candy in the week after Halloween, and the WalMart had such an eye-boggling amount of candy just two weeks ago, I figured I’d have tons to choose from still. But to my shock, when I got there, all the Halloween candy had been replaced with Christmas decorations!

I found the remnants of their candy in a back corner — there was just two small shelves full left. No more massive piles of chips. No more boxes upon boxes of candy. Just a couple bags left of the really crappy stuff.

And, there were like, 10 people there fighting over it! I had to elbow my way in, with the Little Miss, and grab what I could. It was crazy — I thought for a second there it was Boxing Day, and I’d accidentally walked into a 75% off everything sale at The Gap. Sheesh.

Anyway, I got a couple of bags of different (crap) stuff for the Captain to choose from, so we should be well and sugared up by 8pm tonight. I’ll probably be hung over for day one of NaBloPoMo tomorrow. See you then!