Halloween? Yes or No?

At our house back in the day, the answer to that question was YES! Absolutely!

And who wouldn’t say yes, please? My children loved candy and dressing up. Put both together, and you get bliss!

When I say candy, I want you to get the real picture. My children Trick or Treated with pillow cases, just like their dad did. I had the plastic pumpkin and hauled in a modest amount of candy, like normal people.

One Halloween, I weighed one of those bulging pillow cases after a long evening of Trick or Treating all over our Woodhill Drive neighborhood. Six and a half pounds. (Yes–6 1/2 pounds.) Six and a half pounds of candy and chips and some plastic bottles of colored watered masquerading as juice times four for the skinny, little elementary kids at our house!

Don’t worry. We judiciously doled out the sweet gold until the Christmas candy started rolling in.

Halloween was always just a little–no, a lot actually–crazy with classroom parties all afternoon. Then we’d roll home on two wheels so that I could cook the tradition orange and black/purple dinner of macaroni and cheese, carrots, and grape Jello Jigglers. The one night everyone ate with no complaints!

And the costumes. My children played dress up almost every day, and one in particular carried the pastime well into her college years. Consequently, we had tons of dress up items from my bridesmaids dresses to hand-me-downs from neighbors, but Halloween always warranted new costumes from my hand.

I’ve made Pocahontas with burlap and feathers, a chipmunk, a Dalmatian, dinosaurs, Jessie from Story Toy, the Tooth Fairy, a princess, a bunny (and for the year that one of the boys wore that one, I made a carrot costume to match it), Raggedy Ann, an artist, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, plus the ones you see–just to name a few. Give me a glue gun, some felt, fabric paint, and some Ritz dye, and I’m good to go.

I wish I could find pictures right now of all the works of art I created, but this one will have to suffice.

At our house, Halloween was a fun time of playing dress up, running around your neighborhood with friends, and hauling in as much candy as you could carry.

So, Halloween?

Yes, please!