Halloween 2011!

If you didn't know already, Halloween is very exciting on our block. Kids get shuttled in from all different neighborhoods to go trick or treating. The street is lined with parked cars, they park along the island on both sides and some of them even double park and leave their flashers on (I wish I got a picture of the street all lit up with car's hazard lights).

Our first Halloween we were totally unaware of the crazy amount of trick-or-treaters there would be, so we were lucky when a neighbor came by and told us, "only hand out one piece of candy," to make sure we had enough (we went through 8 bags)

Last year we were much more prepared and went through 18 pounds of candy and my polka dot pumpkin was a big hit

This year I knew I wanted to do the polka dot again but I wasn't sure what else to do. After seeing John and Sherry over on Young House Love do their painted pumpkins I thought that was a super cool idea and that I would make two - one that said "Trick" and the other that said "Treat." Mine didn't turn out great though :(

So I moved on to plan B



And I actually like these a lot better.

I also wanted to spruce up the porch and make a Halloween wreath, so I trekked over to Michaels on Friday to see what they had and found tons of stuff on clearance, woo-hoo! I saw a few wreaths that were decent, but they were $15, so I said screw it and decided to make my own. My supplies cost $11

I wrapped my ribbons around the wreath (the orange one didn't quite make it all the way around)

Pinned on some gooey spiders

And drilled a hole in my little wooden characters and hung them from the bottom of the wreath

When I hung it up outside I wrapped my orange twinkly lights around it

I think it looks pretty cute! And not bad for 11 bucks! :) And I was satisfied with the festive porch (pre-punkins carved)

And last night the pumpkins, lights and new wreath greeted many visitors

(can you see the epic fail my polka dot pumpkin was this year? Not lit up at all, grrrr.)

The little ones liked the "Trick" or "Treat" pumpkins and at one point I counted 37 trick-or-treaters I handed candy to without stopping to close the door. We didn't go through as much as last year, but we went through 15 pounds with one piece given to each kid - except the 1/2 bag of hard candy because those are so small.

The big costumes this year were spiderman for the boys and ladybugs for the girls. They were pretty cute. And of course, there's always one really bad parent (last year it was the woman with a 2 year old who knocked on our door at 10:30 when all the lights were out. Wrong on so many levels). This year it was the man who was taking out his 4 year old who wreaked of alcohol and almost fell down our steps. What a fucking idiot.