Our Halloween Front Yard Carnival Recap:

Last Halloween my friends and I came up with an idea.  We wanted to do something in our neighborhood that was fun, and that would help us get to know our neighbors a little better. We decided to do a front yard carnival and out of all of our neighborhoods, we decided that mine was probably going to have the most trick-or-treaters.  So we put up a little board and used it as a "fishing" for candy booth, did some face painting and handed out hot cocoa and coffee.  Even though it wasn't alot, people were still thrilled and excited to have something different and engaging.  And I actually met a lot of my neighbors that night, with whom I am now friends with, which is exactly what I was hoping for.  Yes, I like making friends with my neighbors. Sorry if you think that's wierd.

And some of my neighbors do think that is wierd.  I could tell that some people thought we were freaks who probably spiked the hot cocoa with Mary Jane, but for the most part people were thrilled to warm up with a nice hot drink while their kids filled their bags with candy at our fishing booth.

This year we decided to do the carnival again.  And we had some of the same.  A few parents wouldn't come past the sidewalk and hurried their excited kids through.  But lots of people remembered us from last year and were excited to see us bigger and better then we were the year before.

This time I put up a sign (yes, I vinyled it) on the main road a few days before to let people know about our carnival.  And then we made a super cool, HUGE fishing booth board (yes, I vinyled that too).  Then we had an apple bobbing station, face painting, blongo ball,  and coffee and apple cider (saved us TONS of time mixing up cocoa, and was still super yum-O), and TONS of our friends to help play games and pass stuff out.

There were over 30 of us hanging out at our house that night.  We polished off two giant crockpots full of chili while we waited for people to join our fun.  We were our own party, which was pretty awesome.

Not a single trick-or-treater showed up til after 6 and we were ready to go by 4!  So while we waited we had plenty of time for pictures.  We had the entire cast of Alice & Wonderland; Alice, Queen of Hearts, White Queen, Mad Hatter, March Hare, Caterpillar,Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber (my lovely husband was the Dumber of the two, but it was noticed that atleast he knew how to spell his name correctly) and myself, the Cheshire Cat. =)  That's my big Cheshire smile. I would love to show you a picture of the whole group, but there are a few kiddos in the pic that I can't post due to them being in foster care.  But I can tell you, we all looked awesome!! 



My beautiful White Queen and our Princess Kyrsta




Alice, Queen of Hearts, and White Queen



The picture says it all...

My Cheshire Cat with the cutest tail-holder around

And some of you may not know, but there were FOUR babies all born within a few weeks/months of eachother a couple years ago, including my Asher-dasher.  Asher is the oldest of them all, but by far the smallest.  But we thought it would be super cute if the babies dressed up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  And so turtles they were! 

turtles bobbing for apples

My Michelangelo

It was a great night, and we ran out of candy by about 7:30ish and ended up having to hand out my kids own candy loot.  Shh, they don't know. Nor do they know that I've had a snickers from their bags every night after they've fallen asleep. Muahahaha. Which reminds me..I'm due for a run. Darn you Snickers, why are you so tasty.

So, what was the coolest thing you saw someone doing/handing out while you trick-or-treated with your kids?  I'd really love to know!