Trick or treaters

Our estate seems to have a nice community, we have people going OTT with the entire house decorated, advertise on local community groups on facebook, all well meaning..

I'd just finished installing the permanent outdoor lights so aside from some small pumpkins/animated stuff the Mrs gets in the sales, it's 10 mins to now do something to keep the community spirit going:
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The lights are animated on a Halloween preset.. All we did was add some animated pumpkins that jingle a tune out every now and again..

We had over 100 callers, I suspect since we have a couple of people that go OTT around the corner from us, we just get people on the way that see the house lit up from a distance and head over..
Here's a guy about 100M away who clearly enjoys things, not my cup of tea but you can see the appeal for the kids.
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Everyone seemed polite, even the teenagers, we have a treat bowl that has a skeleton hand that comes out to grab you as you get a treat, funny to see some kids love it, some kids do a complete flight response and leg it..

Kids are on half term around us which I suspect with the good weather today (I had the roof down on the car going home from work) made a perfect storm..
 
Well done to everyone who decorated and either went out trick or treating or went calling. We are not really halloween people and my daughter is still really a baby and to young to see and enjoy it.

On our estate there are lots of young families and lots of decorations and usually they put on a map of houses of who is welcome to callers or not. This year they didn't but I think the unwritten rule of no decorations pumpkins or no callers were followed. I looked out and there must have been 30-40 people crowded on the road at the house opposite. Apparently as a lot of people on our estate put a lot of effort in families have being coming from everywhere on this side of the town to trick or treat here. I think some people have been taken aback by the amount of sweets given away (or pinched from buckets left outside) and some people are upset as quite a few people came over by car and caused issues with parking and driving about. Hopefully it won't be spoilt and not on for future years.
 
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We had over 100 kids past last night - was great.
Problem though is some of them started arriving at 4:30pm - not really realistic for people who are working.
Then we had to turn away some poor kid at 9:30pm because we'd run out of sweets (at around 7) - why do you bring your kid around so late?
 
I've noticed it's pretty common for everyone to descend on particular areas to go trick or treating these days. We get none up my road as its mostly older people who don't participate. But the new build estate approx half a mile away is almost a street fair vibe, it's so busy.
 
I've never been bothered by Halloween, but reading this thread has made me realise talking part is a kind of community activity for those with kids. Out walking the dog last night everything seemed nice and friendly, comments in here tend to agree (one or two exceptions aside).

Growing up a remember it seeming more focused on the trick than the treat, spotting egg shells on drives the next morning and seeing silly string up and down the street for example. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be the case around here.
 
Sinbad2000 said:
Problem though is some of them started arriving at 4:30pm - not really realistic for people who are working.
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But par for the course if you have quite young kids with early bed-times and/or don't want the additional risks of shepherding them around in the dark amidst swarms of bigger people in scary costumes...

Sinbad2000 said:
Then we had to turn away some poor kid at 9:30pm because we'd run out of sweets (at around 7) - why do you bring your kid around so late?
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Because some people are working, have to get home, feed the kids, get everyone dressed up and then get out.


I've never T-or-Ted before, but the kids are getting to that age, so we got them dressed up and headed out. We went for a small local estate, in a village with a strong school community, where most houses were fully decked out and the area was pretty safe in terms of lighting, traffic, etc.
Most houses were cleaned out by 17:30, but we ventured further toward the outskirts and found some great places that had been fairly untapped. Ended up with a haul of about 30 each, which is plenty for 2 kids under 6. The best house was utterly decked out like Hogwarts, lights everywhere and full height scenery facades, a floating Dementor thing, and all these other elements that I recognise from the films (not a fan, can't tell you what they were, though). The dad was outside looking every inch like Voldemort and entertaining all the kids with his performance, while his 'Hermione' daughter had what I actually thought was a real owl on her arm until it blinked and I heard the animatronics!

Scared the absolute **** out of several people, as my 6' Jawa costume had a blank-face veil and glowing orange eyes, so that made me happy!!
 
This is the first time we've been able to decorate the house and participate as we've always lived in flats before. My wife made quite an effort and we had tons of kids come round, it was really nice.

The last one was at about 20:15 and at 21:00 we cleaned up.
 
We probably had 30-40 knocks I reckon. We have a "Happy halloween" sign hanging up, 3 pumpkins and a couple of candles and skeleton heads. Main thing is we have an up/down light with changeable colour hue bulbs in them, which we made purple/green. I think that attracts people. At one point our street was so busy I could barely get into my drive in the car.

One year we put a bowl out and some **** came and took the whole thing despite us clearly having a ring doorbell. So we don't do that. Mrs answers the door all evening till we run out. This year we ran out about 8 0 Clock. Most of the knocks were within the first hour of it getting dark, quite early.
 
jaybee said:
One year we put a bowl out and some **** came and took the whole thing despite us clearly having a ring doorbell. So we don't do that. Mrs answers the door all evening till we run out. This year we ran out about 8 0 Clock. Most of the knocks were within the first hour of it getting dark, quite early.
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Always get 1 doing that as people just do not give a crap.

Same thing happened to someone else around here so they took pictures from the recording of kids doing it and then posted it on Facebook to shame them\make the parents aware lol

Most people where about at 5/5:30pm here and all done quite early
 
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