Happy Halloween!

I think my most/least favorite Halloween memory was 1997. 

Our oldest son fell off of the jungle gym at preschool and suffered a compound fracture.  I received a call from the school staff as the ambulance was pulling away from the school. It was 4 days before Halloween.(Oct. 28)

It's funny the things you remember. I had a pot of ramen noodles boiling on the stove. I turned the burner off, grabbed the baby out of the crib, pulled my toddler out of his bed and took off for the hospital. (This was before cell phones.) I left a note pinned to the door for my husband along with a request for him to call his parents to see if they could meet us at the hospital. I had bought a huge pumpkin that morning, and had plans to carve it that afternoon with the kids. The pumpkin was still sitting in the back seat of the car.

Husband got home about 10 minutes after I left the house, and his parents were able to meet me in the waiting room at the hospital and take the kids home with them. (And my car. It had the car seats.) We found out that the kid was going to need surgery to reset the arm.

It was a very long night. He went back for surgery around 10 pm, and came out around midnight. He asked his father to spend the night with him, and I went home. Remember the ramen noodles? They were still on the stove, sitting in water.  They were next level awful looking. They went into the trash.

When he came home the following day, he had 2 pins in his arm around his elbow and a cast that took over most of his left arm, with a sling built into the cast.

Halloween day, I decided that we needed to keep things as normal as possible. So, I pulled the pumpkin out of the back of my car. The pumpkin that had been sitting there for 4 days. In the heat. In the back of my Honda Civic. While the toddler used it as a step stool to get into his car seat. The bottom was rotting.

So, I put the pumpkin on the grass, turned it over and scooped out the guts.  It turns out that if you do things this way - with rotting pumpkin - it is actually very easy to scoop things out. We decided to leave the entrails, if you will all over the ground and cut a very weird lopsided face into the side of the pumpkin and then put multiple tealights around the mess.  As the pumpkin continued to rot and fall apart in the heat of the tea lights, it made an especially gory mess.

The kid with the broken arm dressed up as a starving artist that year.  I had a beret (no comments about that - we weren't THAT far out of the 80's).  He wore sweat pants and a huge t-shirt that we were able to get the cast through.  We attached a piece of cardboard cut out and decorated to look like an artists' palette.  Voila!  1 starving artist costume!

I hope each and every one of you has a safe Halloween!

Halloween Candy

my favorite candy bar.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

What is your favorite Halloween candy?  Let's be honest, even though we're adults, we all have our favorite Halloween Candy, and we tend to buy that on Halloween, just "in case" we don't give it all out, then we won't mind taking care of it.


When I was a kid back in the 70's, the variety of candy that was handed out was vastly different than it is today.  Red Hots, Good and Plenty, Mike and Ike, Tootsie Pops, and Hundred Thousand Dollar Bars populated our bags, in addition to McDonald's Trick or Treat Prizes and homemade popcorn balls and caramel apples  (Remember, this was a more innocent era.  Popcorn balls were still handed out, but I remember when and why we had to stop giving out homemade goodies for Halloween.)  When Dad was stationed in Ohio, our next door neighbors still made caramel apples with crushed peanuts - but she brought them around to the kids - and handed it off to the parents - during the afternoon of Halloween, so we would know who it came from.

My favorite Halloween candy back then was the little fun size Krackle bars.  In our family, nobody liked the Special Dark bars, and Dad used to hoard those.

When my own kids were little, during the 90's and early 00's the nature of Halloween Candies had changed.  More candy was chocolate based, and more people handed out coupons for free fries or other treats from the fast food restaurants in town.  The people in our neighborhood added a twist, and we'd get toothbrushes and toothpaste samples from the dentist, and passes to the gym from the personal trainer.  We gave out our own packs of non-candy treats.

A vivid memory I have is of my kids, all sitting on the living room floor and sorting their candy.  Our daughter traded away all of her chocolate, but she was a shrewd negotiator.  She ended up with the pencils, crayons, bubbles, and candy necklaces that her brothers scoffed at.

What we're giving our for Halloween this year!  Image: Amazon.

Even though I tend not to hand out candy, that doesn't mean our house isn't full of candy this time of year.  I have a jar full of candy corn that I snack on occasionally.  I also have my favorite candies: fun size Snickers bars and full size Dark Chocolate Coconut bars.  (think Mounds bars, but with the yummy twist of Dark Chocolate.)  And I wonder why I need to lose weight?

I usually pick up 2 bags of the fun size candy bars.  Why?  Because I like to bake Christmas cookies with them....

I'd really like to conduct a very unscientific poll right now.  Among the people who read this blog, WHAT is your favorite Halloween Candy?  Please put a note in the comments.  I'm really, really curious!

Allergy Free Treats

This is a re-post from last year. Please consider participating if you can!

 My daughter and husband have pretty serious food allergies to milk and chocolate.  For this reason, I've always given out allergy free treats for Halloween.  (Non-Food treats)

source: http://preview.tinyurl.com/p4t8gcs

Our house has always been the "interesting" house.  While I never went so far as to hand out toothbrushes and toothpaste, (I left that to the dentist who lived next door), or free passes to the gym (The personal trainer down the street), I have always handed out something a little bit different.

I would hit up the Back to School sales and put together a bundle of stuff for kids. Anything I had left over at the end of the night was always donated to our local homeless shelter the following weekend.

You must understand - I begin searching for these goodies the day after Halloween.  I have my storage boxes of Halloween stuff in the basement.  As I find goodies on sale, I pick them up and add them to the box.  I usually hand out pencils.  Sometimes, if I find an amazing deal on crayons or funky pens or those little packs of play dough, I'll hand those out.  I've found cute little erasers that I've held onto for an entire year. They were big and chunky, and they had some fun shapes to them.  Another year, we had a stash of books from cereal boxes that I handed out.  (The older kids who roamed through got the pencils, pens, and erasers that year.)

Use your imagination.  Kids enjoy candy, I know.  BUT, other treats are also fun to find in the trick or treat bags.  A few years back, one of our neighbors gave out packets of pumpkin seeds!

In our community, we get candy overload.  Almost every church holds a Harvest Festival or Trunk or Treating.  The high school's homecoming game and parade are held on Halloween.  The kids on the floats throw candy to the little kids, and then the little kids go Trick or Treating.  So much candy!

In light of the number of food allergies that are out there, Food Allergy Research and Education, FARE for short, has been asking for a new tradition to begin.  An allergy free tradition.  http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project#.VFDmbRYT1OI

If you are handing out allergy free treats, paint a pumpkin teal and place it out in front of your house, along with a free FARE printable sign so that parents and children know that you have allergy free treats to hand out.

What a great way to keep Halloween fun for everyone!


*The teal pumpkin picture above was taken from this post on the Michigan Radio website: http://michiganradio.org/post/kids-food-allergies-will-be-looking-teal-pumpkins-halloween.
The Tiny URL above will take you directly to their website, but I wanted to make certain that I gave them full credit! 

Allergies and Halloween

Yesterday, I mentioned that my daughter and husband both have some pretty severe food allergies.  My husband grew up in an age when food allergies were largely ignored, or considered to be a "choice" or that he was a "picky eater".  My daughter has had issues throughout school, and has had to be vigilant and her own advocate since she started school, as many of her teachers and the cafeteria staff thought she was just being "picky".

Yep, the joys of having a milk allergy.  It doesn't get the press that peanut allergies do, but it is every bit as dangerous to her and her well being. 

Anyway, how do you safely celebrate Halloween when your child has food allergies without sucking the joy out of the occasion for every parent, child, and teacher around you?

It's all a matter of how vigilant you are willing to be.

Most schools no longer have Halloween Parties.  When my kids were in elementary school, they still did.  I made arrangements with my daughter's teachers to be in charge of snacks for all of the parties.  I got together with another mom who's child had peanut allergies.  Between us, we decided the most stress free way for us to handle this was to ask for a cash donation - at that time, it was $1/child, and we went out and bought the allergy free goodies ourselves.  We happily bought fresh pressed cider, apples, and brought in popcorn and other safe treats for our kids.   We had a blast shopping and cooking together over the years!  Oh, the year we got a donation of apple cider and pumpkin donuts (dairy and nut free) from one of the local bakeries was amazing!

Anyway, I found a list on the Food Allergy Research and Education Blog about how to have a safe Halloween when your child has food allergies.
http://blog.foodallergy.org/?s=how+to+have+a+safe+halloween.

Here is their list:

• Stock up on safe treats or inexpensive trinkets/toys to trade for any unsafe candies your child might receive while trick-or-treating. You can also use sorting through your child’s candy as an opportunity to teach him or her about hidden allergens and reading labels.
• Enforce a “no eating while trick-or-treating” rule, so that you have time to review all food labels.
• Avoid candy and treats that do not have an ingredient label.
• Always have an epinephrine auto-injector available, if prescribed.
• Keep in mind that the mini-size, fun-size, or bite-size version of candy may contain different ingredients than their full-size counterparts. Make no assumptions, and read all labels carefully.
• Keep the emphasis on the fun, rather than the candy.
• Consider starting a tradition by allowing their kids to leave their unsafe candies out for the “Good Witch” to collect and leave behind small gifts and safe treats.
• Consider making small and safe “goody bags” for neighbors to give to your child. Deliver the bags in advance and describe your child’s costume to your neighbors. Encourage your child to trick-or-treat at the houses in which you’ve delivered the bags.
• Consider skipping trick-or-treating, and have a Halloween party instead, featuring safe and delicious treats. Or, skip the treats altogether by replacing them with other fun Halloween toys, games, or party favors.
• Remember that a candy that has been safe for your child in the past may now have different ingredients. Read the label, every time.

Have a fun and safe Halloween!