120 Halloween bags later...

Back in my trick or treating days (many more years ago than I care to realize) my favorite items to receive were Reeses peanut butter cups, Necco wafers, and little treat bags.  I liked the mystery of what could be inside and anticipated getting home to rip them open.  This is the sixth Halloween that I've made treat bags for the kids in our neighborhood.  We have a city lot (under one tenth of an acre!) and we get a good amount of trick or treaters despite the cool October temperatures in Maine.  Kids here have been known to wear their costumes over snow suits!

I spread my supplies out on the coffee table and got to work.  This year I used a chocolates mini mix (3 musketeers, milky way, snickers, and twix), dum dums, smarties, tootsie rolls, jawbreakers, stickers, skull rings, and plastic creatures.  I ended up using another bag of creatures and dum dum pops that aren't shown.

Here's the finished product.  I tossed the remaining candy in our Halloween bowl and we've got backup fun size kit kats (one of Jake's favorites) in case we run out of everything else.  :)

They wouldn't fit in the candy bowl so I've tossed them in our picnic basket for the time being.  As I mentioned in my last Halloween post, we put the honesty candy bowl out and the kids can take as many treat bags.  This is in exchange for them not ringing our doorbell and getting our dogs riled up.  I just refill the candy bowl every half hour and the arrangement is a win-win for everyone.  This will be the sixth Halloween and no one has stolen the bowl or done any 'tricks' on our house yet.  :)

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

P.S. Melissa, your brother and I are watching Supernatural Season 4 disc 2 this weekend in honor of Halloween.  It includes Monster Movie (the black and white episode with the shapeshifter), Yellow Fever (Dean is haunted then Jensen Ackles performs Eye of the Tiger in the end credits - too funny!), and It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.  Did you know there is a Dean Winchester calendar?

Halloween Mantle

Our mantle is ready for Halloween!

My mother-in-law made the quilt hanging above the mantle a couple years ago. It's been our only Halloween decoration until today.  I taped two large bamboo skewers together to make a quilt hanger and tied it off with raffia for added strength. 

I usually skipped over Halloween and instead favored autumn items that worked through Thanksgiving.  My favorite element was nearly free...I removed the pillar candles from the hurricane jars, poured in a generous heap of candy corn (one of Jake's favorites), and nestled those nifty flameless tealights into the candy corn.   

I think it's cute and fun mix of what we already had (like the inexpensive Whole Foods flowers) and four new items purchased from Joanns for around $15 (the wooden signs and hangings under mantle).  What do you think? 

Want to see more?  Tour our living room here. 




We'll be mingling at these parties this week.  Go join in the fun!

The Stories of A to Z is having a Halloween Mantle party.