Happy Halloween!

Quick ideas and reminders:

• If you want trick or treaters to come to your door, leave a porch light on. Make sure that the walkway to your house is clear of any fallen twigs, excess leaves or anything that may impair little feet from safely walking on your front walk.
• As tempting as it may be, if you are expecting children that you don’t know, and more importantly, who don’t know you don’t offer homemade treats such as cookies, cupcakes and popcorn balls. Parent have rightly become so wary of such items that your hard work and great effort will most certainly end up in the trash.
• A treat bag with several small, wrapped candies inside and tied with a ribbon or raffia is a nice way of presenting the goodies. It also serves two purposes: it keeps everything fair without the squabbles of who got more and it allows you to put a mix of candies, packaged cookies etc together without anyone complaining that they ‘don’t like that kind’… they can swap those around once they get home.
• Dress up for fun yourself! It’s great to be a kid again!
• At a reasonable time, it’s ok to turn off the lights and no longer answer the door. That does not mean that your doorbell will not ring, but it will lessen the chance and of course, you need not answer the door after ‘lights out’.
• Keep your outside animals inside on Halloween. With so much activity around the house, there are many opportunities for your pets to get excited, confused and/or injured. Speaking from experience, the vet’s office late on Halloween night is a sad place to end the fun.
• Have fun and remember if a lot of children show up at your door from other areas of town by the carload: their own neighborhood may not be a safe place to trick or treat and their parents deem yours to be better.