Halloween in the Hood

I’m sort of amazed we pulled it off. One of the ladies in our subdivision, which is not very organized and has no way to communicate except signs and word of mouth, said “let’s have a block party for Halloween”. So two more of us said “I’m in”, traded a bunch of messages because we never could get together to meet, and planned a block party. This neighborhood has never pulled anything off like this in the 17 years I’ve lived here. When Heath first moved here they had some “bring a drink and bag of chips” parties in our cul-de-sac but he always managed to be gone. But, someone designed the flyers, someone else printed and distributed them, and then we were committed! And people responded, we had 154 RSVPs as of this morning but we had more people than that turn out.

I spent the last three days in the kitchen. Thursday I rolled out sugar cookie pumpkins and ghosts (using refrigerated dough, I know when to go the easy route) and colored icing for the kids to decorated cookies. Friday was spent baking for the bake sale to benefit a neighbor with ALS. I made chocolate cake, brownies, Crispix “puppy chow”, Butterbeer Fudge (not quite a disaster) and Rice Krispy Treats that could have passed for paving stones and ended up being tossed. Today it was a final trip to Kroger for lemonade — and for stuff Katy needed for a party tonight — and homemade baked beans. By the time I headed over to set up, I was already worn out!

But there were more successes than failures. We had a bouncy slice and bounce house and some of the firefighters brought a truck out. I asked what shift they were and they said A shift. I asked if any were around a few years ago when the motor in our fridge went out. One guy said he was. Since the 911 operator told them the house was on fire (after I explicitly said there was no fire) the whole shift came out. But that’s a little off-topic. We had games and tons of food.

We had a bake sale to benefit Steve and Hope, which was very timely as Steve just got back from 16 days in ICU. Katy the scientist didn’t like the way I arranged the goodies so she rearranged them. Then more things were added and she did  some arranging.

 

Katy had to fall back on her Dipper costume as it was in the 80s and too hot for her main costume. It was great weather for a block party, though!

And there was music here and there and where there’s music someone will eventually get up and dance.

It was great time and people are already talking about doing it again. I should be rested and recovered in time to do it next year.