Halloween was full of chills and thrills, and drama (the candy stealer!) so I thought I’d follow up on my post from last week (Halloween Decor). First of all, the homemade ghost….
How to Assemble a Ghost:
The ghost assembly ingredients were stored on top of the stove in the garage (the repository that I can’t part with because I’m waiting for the new confection/bake stove to quit so I can put the old ugly stove that cooks better back in) until the big day. They consisted of a foam hat head from Michaels (on sale for $6 with a 40% coupon), a $2 string of ghost LED lights from Dollarama, and an old broom. Conveniently, the foam head had an opening the exact same diameter as the broomstick so it fit perfectly onto the top of broom. I taped the lights on, starting with the eyeballs, and then wound the rest of the string around the broomstick. Then I draped a length of white flimsy ghost material ($4 costume also from the dollar store), over the whole thing. I stuck the broomstick behind the rosebush and tied it to the front deck so it wouldn’t fly away, as ghosts are wont to do.
Voila! I think he looks a bit like ET. What were you expecting for $12 – Martha Stewart?
Okay, there might be a reason Martha’s ghosts look better than mine. It needed another layer of material, something for the face, and perhaps some more lights, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.
As the evening progressed, Elliot was looking more and more phosphorescent, until he just faded away….
Note to self – buy a new broomstick for next year – that one was pretty beat up.
The Post Halloween Sales: (in which people who didn’t get enough candy, buy more for half price….)
I did manage to buy a new witch’s hat the next day, ($6.50) to go with my new cape. This one is nice because it has a black veil (for creating mystery) and a collapsible point (for those days when you don’t want anyone to know you’re a witch.) Alas, all the witch costumes were gone as I refused to get up that early. (I wanted three so I could invite two friends to re-enact MacBeth for next year’s witch walk.) But as a witch isn’t born, she “begins” (according to that commercial about Yaga that they show on tv every ten minutes) at least I’ll be prepared.
The Award Winning Display:
It was a perfect evening for Halloween (warm, no rain), so I had about 50 kids, with some really great costumes. When the rush was over, I left the smaller ghosts twirling in the wind,
set the bowls outside for any lingering spooks, and went to check out an animated display in another neighbourhood, which I had driven past many times but had never seen it at night. Every square inch of the yard was taken up with something ghoulish, including two horror houses (sorry, I don’t know my horror movies but the tent and garage looked and sounded scary – enter at your own risk). Smoke and music billowed from everywhere. I heard last year there was a flash dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in front of the house, courtesy of a local dance group.
Watch out! You never know what is going to snatch you!
I spoke with the homeowners briefly – they’d had 300 kids through by 9pm. They were sitting on their front step with two huge boxes of full size candy bars (I declined), but the kids were having so much fun being scared they weren’t even thinking about the candy…..but somebody else was…..
The Post Halloween Drama: (or The Great Candy Debate)
When I went on facebook later, a post from my community group popped up. An upset homeowner had posted a videocam of someone stealing their candy, and asked if anyone could identify the thief. They had left two bowls out on a table in front of their house, so they could take their own child trick or treating, with a note to take one of each. There were two young boys (10ish?) on the CCTV, and while the one kid took one out of each bowl, the other kid dumped the whole bowl into his sack, and then did the same thing for the second bowl, then they ran away. This is wrong on so many levels, not just the stealing, but the lack of empathy in not leaving any candy for anyone else, as the homeowner pointed out it was “a teachable moment.”
So I go on to read the comments (of which there are over 100 by then, with the usual trolls), and a couple of other people said they’d had similar things happen. (I only had two groups of older kids that night – one of boys, and one of girls, but they were all very polite.) While it’s disturbing to see something like that spoil such a fun evening, later when I was thinking about it, I wondered if maybe the kid came from a home with food insecurity? He might know it was wrong, but wouldn’t necessarily think about getting caught on camera, so it might just be a crime of opportunity. I noticed neither boy was wearing a Halloween costume, just t-shirts and hoodies, so that might indicate some parenteral absence right there? Just some thoughts…..from this land of Halloween excess. According to the news, Canadians spent one billion dollars on Halloween this year. Have you ever experienced Halloween greed? (other than your own of course…there are no chocolate bars left here and the chips are under lock and key.)
Daylight Savings Time:
On to more cheerful topics, depending on how you feel about sleep and daylight. We got an extra hour to gorge on candy and sleep Halloween night. We turned the clocks back here in Ontario, (at least until Quebec and New York decide not to), whereas other Canadian provinces have decided to stay on permanent daylight savings time. I myself would rather have an extra hour of daylight in the evening, as now that I’m retired I don’t do mornings, so I don’t care what time the sun rises as I never see it. But some of the sleep experts are now saying that they should have chosen standard time instead, as it’s more in tune with our circadian rhythms. All of the high schools start at 8am now and even some of the grade schools go in at 8:30 – on top of a bus ride aren’t the kids falling asleep in class? Sleep deprivation is too hard on the body, especially for growing children, and shift workers. I think we should adopt European time – start work or school at a reasonable hour, say 9am, with a long siesta break for lunch, work until 6, have an apertivo, a stroll around the piazza for exercise, and a late supper, and go to bed at midnight. What are your thoughts on the time change?
