Finally, Some Real Trick Or Treating
Last Wednesday (aka Halloween) marked Clara’s first legit trick-or-treating adventure.
We got rained out last year and the first year she could barely sit up unassisted, let alone knock on doors begging for candy. So it was a treat in itself that this year the stars aligned and we could take Clara out for some good ol’ fashioned T-or-T-ing.
The verdict? She loved it. As demonstrated by this pic (the only one that we got of her smiling face, since she spent most of the adventure dragging us down the street so we just had a view of her braid).
She proudly donned her homemade Jessie the cowgirl costume, grabbed her pumpkin bucket, and marched with us to about 8 or so houses.
We left Burger at home because, well, he only wears his costume for about 10 seconds before shaking it off and he’s the shy one of the family. Meanwhile Clara could hardly wait to see all of our neighbors and shout “trick or treat!”
It got darker faster than we expected, so our photos quickly became blurrier and grainier than we had hoped. But there were at least a few sweet moments that got captured on film.
And we probably would’ve made it to more houses had a band of tweenagers dressed in scary costumes not crossed our paths (and by scary costumes I mean no costumes at all, except for a couple of bloody masks). Clara, whom we’ve learned is easily frightened by realistic Halloween decorations, was immediately a crying mess and just began wailing “I want to go to my house!” It was a pretty clear sign to call it a night.
Her loot was pretty meager, but that’s more than fine by us. And once we got home and she calmed down she had fun answering the door with me and handing out candy to the rest of the trick or treaters. She was so into the game of “What is he/she dressed up like?” that even this week she still asks us questions like “What is the tree going to be for Halloween?”
How was your All Hallow’s Eve? Any especially spooky costumes or houses? Any full size candy bars on your trick or treating route? Clara got one and we were like “wow, they’re high rollers.” It was awesome.
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We always get all of the cousins and go together and stay out as late as people have candy. There is a church down the street that always passes out hot chocolate, hot cider, full size candy bars, and baked goods… you can bet we stopped by there!!
We also got candy from a man dressed as a pirate… he ran over to us in the middle of the street and dumped candy into the kids’ buckets and said, “I wanted until that guy went inside and I took all of his candy and gave it to you!” We hurried off because he was kind of weird haha
I love Clara’s DIY’d Jessie the Cowgirl Costume! Nice work, Sherry :) What a great milestone for Clara. Can’t wait to see what she decides to be for next year’s Halloween!
Can you believe that in less than 2 months it’ll be January 2013?? The countdown is ON! :-D
Ahhhhh!
xo
s
We stayed in with friends and ordered pizza and just hung out all night while passing out candy. We had some adorable little ones come to our door!
It’s amazing how quickly they catch on to the concept of trick or treating…so much fun taking the little ones.
There are a few houses in our neighborhood that gives out the fullsize bars….definitely high rollers! ;) One house gave out quarters and you could hear all the kids screaming “money! they gave us money!” It was very cute!
Hahahahah!
xo
s
I LOVE her costume! I told my mom about it the other day and she was super-impressed. (That from a woman that sewed me an Ariel costume, complete with fins…) Anyways, I’m glad that Clara had fun- she looked adorable. Hopefully as she gets a bit older the scary costumes won’t upset her as much!
My daughter was also Jessie, and my son was one of the little Aliens from toy story. They are 4 and 11 months. We got to about 20 houses, and had 2 full size candy bars, and a can of soda (weird).
Weird!
xo
s
Sherry, you are [i]wearing[/i] those J-Lo boots, girl! Love it.
Clara’s just so adorably cute. Glad you guys had a nice time.
Haha, oh yeah I had to break them in.
xo
s
We handed out candy. Not a lot of trick-or-treaters this year, probably because of the storm, or maybe because people go to other towns (sad). The smallest kids (3-5) had the best costumes, though most were store-bought. There were a fair number of pre-teens that stopped by in homemade stuff, which was pretty good. The teenagers mostly wore hoodies [[rolls eyes]].
So adorable! Love her smiling face! I hate it that tweenagers ruined her fun. I am a grown adult and some of those masks still scare me!
When I was growing up, we always dressed as “scary” things – witches, mummies, ghosts, etc. But I think nowadays, they take it too far. My kids (Mario and a lion this year) were terrified when we passed a few scary costumes!
Soo precious!!! Dont those teens that trick or treat drive you crazy???
I mean I totally did it too, but I went all out costume wise. I had a lot of kids come to our house with a plaid shirt and boots and call themselves cowboys. Or like you said, street clothes with a mask. Rude :)
At least she had fun for a while. Poor girl. My son is about 6 months older and he got pretty freaked out by an older kid who came to our door. :(
How sweet!! That’s the perfect night of trick or treating since you got to go out and enjoy, and then stay in and enjoy. Win/win! And Clara looked adorable, as always.
We took our little 6 month old man out trick or treating with some friends just so show off our family themed costume. It’s musically related… Check it out here:
http://themurrayedlife.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-halloween-that-takes-cake.html
And a BIG YAY for the holiday season upon us!!
So cute!!
xo
s
This was our daughters first real year as well, but it was very rainy so we only went to a couple of houses, one neighbor had goldfish crackers instead of candy for her, so we think that was pretty thoughtful. At least she knew we weren’t gonna be sneaking those. But her cousin did scare her and she still asks about the “scary people” outside, even when its like 8 o’clock in the morning hahaha
So cute!
xo
s
Well…we had tons of T-or-T’ers, and saw some great costumes (a Geisha and a box of Nerds for instance)…but the weirdest thing were the parents who came up with their children, but had their own bucket to fill! Um…I don’t think so! (Even though I caved and gave them candy anyways, but I thought it was bizarre).
So strange!
xo
s
So cute! We do the hayride every year, so my husband drove the kids (and parents) around. It was a lot of fun. I have to say though that I kept encouraging the kids to say “Trick or Treat” and “Thank you”. One of the older kids was grabbing a handful of candy & then trying to go in for more when the little kids were still behind him. At one point I told him in a nice but firm tone “No more. Save the candy for other kids. You’ve had enough.” when he went in for a second giant handful. What I really wanted to say was “KNOCK IT OFF AND SAY THANK YOU.” Haha. The other kids were great though, and quite adorable. My husband has already said he can’t wait until we have kids and they bring their friends and he’s “that dad”. You know, the cool one who drives the hay trailer on the tractor. I’ve already decided next year I’m bringing a 6 pack for the parents and a large pizza.
Our Halloween was postponed due to loss of power, downed trees and power lines etc..
Just found out today, that trick-or-treating will be this Sat.!
Better late than never.
Yay! Have fun!
xo
s
So glad to hear it didn’t rain for Clara. Our Halloween (the first one in our new house/a real neighborhood) was a lot less exciting as we had hoped due to the cold and rain. Now I’m stuck with an extra, unopened bag of candy.
Such a cute costume!
So cute! My daughter keeps asking me the same thing – Mommy, what are you going to be for Halloween? I keep saying “A Mommy”. LOL!
Oh, Clara’s costume looks great–how wonderful that she had a good time for her first trick or treating! Our daughter just turned 2 last week, so I was super excited for her “first” Halloween, too, complete with her DIY’ed “bunch of grapes” costume. (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rfmamkW6OlU/UJGWGifwAOI/AAAAAAAAMLQ/tGdumIN408Y/s1600/IMGP0150.JPG)
Unfortunately, though, we’re in NJ and Halloween has been postponed until tonight. It’s still a total mess here with trees and wires, so I don’t know if we’ll actually venture out. We’ll see! Luckily we bought an unnecessarily large bag of purple balloons so we can always recycle the costume idea for next year….
Aw, have fun if you do go out Annie- and be safe!
xo
s
Looks like you guys had fun! I’m always a little wary of the groups of too-old-to-trick-or-treat teenagers. As soon as they start showing up with no costume, shoving a pillowcase full of candy through my door, without even bothering to say trick-or-treat, we turn off the lights and call it a night. Of course no costume is better than high schoolers in skanky costumes.
So super cute! <3 Thanks for sharing.
This was our first year taking our kids out (3 & 1). They were ridiculously cute, and they scored a ton of candy. One house gave each of them THREE full-sized candy bars. Kind of crazy honestly. I think they were wanting to get rid of all their candy so they could turn out their lights & call it a night. ;)
My biggest disappointment is that I got no good pictures of my kids – we were running a little bit behind, and by the time we got them all costumed-up, the light was already bad. My son was a firefighter, and his costume had reflector tape which was all you could see when I took a picture with the flash. Without the flash all you could see were blurry blobs. I’m hoping to get them back in their costumes this week just for photos.
So, did you and Sherry enjoy that full size candy bar yourselves? You’re supposed to tell the kids the big ones are for the parents.
Hahaha- nice method!
xo
s
For some reason, our street is always huge with people. We’ve had friends come over and design spooky movies we project on the front windows of the house. But this year, it was just a couple of spooky eyes right above the front porch. (Google cutting eyes out of a t.p. roll and putting in a light or glow stick, but we did it with a giant carpet roll and orange lights inside.)
Our neighbors keep count and said we had around 450 kids show up this year. This is why we can’t afford to buy the “good” candy. Mostly lollipops and tootsie rolls from us.
Wow! That’s crazy!!
xo
s
So cute! HJ also was scared by some realistic decorations and had a scary melt down mid way through our trick-or-treating. Can we make a law that there can only be cute Halloween decorations/costumes until our kids are a little older?
Hahah! Or a “before 6pm” rule about that being little kid time? Haha.
xo
s
My son (6 weeks younger than Clara)loved his first real trick-or-treat. My little tiger was a little shy at first, but then would practically run up people’s walk way to say “trick or treat.” He was really good about saying “thank you” and often added a “Happy Halloween.” Yesterday, he busted out a “trick or treat” when he wanted a cookie!
We live in a small town and practically the entire county trick or treats in our neighborhood. Due to this, no full size bars to be found and very little chocolate candy!
Poor Clara! I feel for her :o( I don’t like the grizzly-gross gorey part of Halloween either. I remember a few years ago one of our candy tours was cut short by a ‘gentleman’ in a mask jumping out of the bushes wielding a chainsaw :o( I was amazed that the next year Little Man wanted to go back (just not to -that- house).
This year we split forces: I stayed home and handed out candy, and the husband and Little Man went trick or treating on a neighborhood’s haywagon! They had a ball, and so did I!
Nice! My kids got one full sized bag of skittles…. I keep putting off letting them have it. :)
Ah, how I miss my days of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood of “high rollers”…there were houses giving out full size candy bars, cans of pop, slices of pizza, and…wait for it…$5 bills. You just had to be sure to bypass the pilot’s house handing out airline peanuts. Those were the days.
My mother fondly remembers the full-size candy givers from her childhood and has made it her mission in life to be that house on her street. She loves how excited the kids get when she passes them full size bars.
This was our oldest daughter’s last year trick-or-treating, so it was bittersweet! Enjoy your time with Clara-she is so sweet! Jessie is one of our oldest’s favs-she still has her Jessie and Woody dolls. Happy Fall!!
We live in Northern Virginia. In a small apartment. No trick or treat to be had here. SO… we went to the Mall. Who knew? It was PERFECT. Safe, warm, filled with families and kids in adorable costumes. All the stores had tons of treats. There were people making balloon animals and face painters. It was awesome. Very different from the neighborhood trick-or-treating I remember.. but a fun Urban spin on a holiday!
“I want to go to my house!” – so sweet and so cute
Awww…so cute to see “Jessie” (& posse) in T or T-ing action :)
Since my dad passed, I always go over to my mum’s on Halloween to assist on door/candy duty (I think like Clara, mum’s afraid of the scary “tweenagers”, too :)
It was around 8 pm, so I decided that the next bunch of kids would get ALL our remaining chocolate bars. I said:
“Whoever says Trick or Treat – SMELL MY FEET! And says it FIRST – gets ALL the candy!”.
Would you believe, it was one of the dad’s who roared it out first! HA! And, to the victor, go the spoils :)
xox
I don’t blame Clara for getting scared when seeing those bloody masks…they scare me too sometimes!
Me tooooo… so gross. :(
Clara, however, is a doll. :)
Haha, love the NY Giants pumpkin in the first picture!!!! (Don’t know how I spotted that!)
my 28 month old was Dora the Explorer. I made the wig and the “map”. it turned out really cute! she got 3 full size chocolate bars!!
So sorry Clara was frightened by the bigger kids, but she obviously had a great time before that – the picture with her grinning is the best!
My son,who is almost exactly Clara’s age, boycotted trick or treating this year :( I was disappointed because I made him an amazing Thomas the train costume (he’s obsessed)from scratch! Oh well, maybe he’ll still fit in it next year… :)
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8059/8158813571_74f6333d20_m.jpg
Awww – so cute! My little man ended up going as batman. He puffed right up every time anyone said “HEY BATMAN!” and then dubbed my hubby as his side kick Robin. He got enough candy to keep him on a sugar high well into December. I am doing my duty as a parent and eating all his chocolate. ;-)It’s a tough job but hey, them’s the breaks. ;-)
Cute pictures! I laughed about the part that Clara got a whole candy bar. When we were kids, my sister and I use to memorize the houses that gave the best loot (whole bar or a baggy full of multiple pieces) and NEVER missed them each year!
My son is about the same age as Clara and had funny reaction when someone opened the door in a scary mask. His eyes got bigger and bigger and I could see the fight or flight rising in him. The rest of us reassured him and laughed, then he was OK. We stayed away from as much scary stuff as we could, though.
It was our daughter’s first year trick or treating too! Her first 2 years, she was a newborn and we also lived on a rural street so we didn’t get anyone at the door. Last year we moved into town and we kept her home to answer the door where she could experience costumes in her own setting and hopefully lessen any fears. She did really well ToT’ing! She marched up to those doors, said trick or treat and even remembered to say thank you! It took forever to get from one house to another due to the fact that she had her head in her bag checking out her goodies. Overall it was a successful evening.
It’s so good to see that Clara enjoyed trick or treating this year! My twins are almost exactly a year behind her and I’m so excited to see them get into the spirit next year!!
We’re in eastern PA, so our neighborhood was out of power on actual Halloween, so we (somehow) managed to get the whole ‘hood to agree to postpone it to Friday! And boy did we have a good turn out of trick-or-treaters! We had 5 bags of candy bought pre-storm, and I bought one more big 100 count bag post-storm, and we went through it all! I also made out some goodie bags for the smallest trick-or-treaters, and some free Frosty coupons too!
I also dressed up in my latest DIY costume – Applejack, from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! But I forgot to have someone take my picture!! Gah!! I’ll have to put the get-up on again and have a photo-shoot. I was so proud of it, too! I used pinterest tutorials for it and everything!
So cute! Clara wasn’t the only Jessie. Did you see Sandra Bullock’s version? https://www.google.com/search?q=sandra+bullock+halloween+costume&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#biv=i|0;d|KcKqL4ffo5-mrM:
So cute!
xo,
s
I just adore her Jessie the cowgirl costume! We have a bought one and yours is so much cuter, Sherry :)
BTW – I got your book in the mail today!!! AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! I immediately ignored my kids and started right in looking at the pictures and getting ideas! So happy for you both and wish you all the best :)
Ahhhhhhh! So exciting! Hope you love it.
xo
s
Definitely read that last part and thought you said Clara went, “wow they’re high rollers.” I was about to praise her thug-life vocab when I re-read the sentence and realized that it was not a Clara comment…soon enough…soon enough…
Hahah!
xo
s