Halloween in Rolando

   

When I lived in South Park, I used to love decorating the 4-person apartment building I lived in and handing out candy from the front stoop.

My old apartment in South Park. Sniffle....

Kids storming the South Park castle for
candy. I'm on the balcony.

Growing up I never really cared one way or the other about Halloween. But that changed when I moved to South Park. My first year, I was caught completely off guard (and under-stocked on candy) by at least 150 trick or treaters. Everyone brings their kids over to South Park for candy. Something about all the kids having fun in their costumes got me excited about Halloween for the first time in my life, so every year after that I spent at least $50 on candy and invited my friends over and we'd sit in front of the building with bowls of candy hanging out and being sugar pimps.

But when I bought my house and moved to my new neighborhood, Rolando, everything was different and my love affair with Halloween came to an abrupt halt.

My first year here, Halloween was on a Saturday and I got 3 trick-or-treaters. THREE. Granted, I left the house at 6:45pm to go set up at Adam's house because we were hosting our semi-annual Secret Apollo/Shaw Brother Halloween party (a few pics from that party are at the bottom of this post), but still, trick or treating usually kicks off by 5pm so I expected more than three. And I didn't see any packs of kids on the street as I left. It totally bummed me out on Halloween in my new neighborhood.

My second  year, I wasn't even motivated to decorate. I went 4 blocks away to Matt's house to hand candy out there. I hung out watching movies with him and his brother until 10pm and he got about 8 kids. I thought his traffic would be better because my house is very close to a main, busy street and he's nestled inside the actual neighborhood. Wrong.

This year, my third Halloween in my house, I finally got the spirit and decided to decorate. I blame Martha Stewart. I subscribe to Living Magazine and she had some really cool pumpkin ideas that didn't require carving. So I made a few pumpkins:

My batkins

Cliff, my mummykin

This required me to go to the fabric store (I had to get sewing pins for their eyeballs) and while I was there, I discovered something wonderful: the fabric store had two isles of Halloween decorations! AND it was all 60% off - 3.5 weeks before Halloween!! People who know me, know I LOVE a good Halloween or Christmas decoration sale, but I usually have to wait until after the holiday and pack all my goodies away for 12 months. So I ended up getting more inspired and spending a couple hundred dollars on new decor and pumpkins. Then I dug out my Halloween bin in the garage and attacked my front yard.

All said and done, I bought 13 pumpkins of various sizes and colors

The planter bed...I mean grave pit, by my front door

Oh no! A giant, vicious spider!

Blurry because I had the flash off and 
wasn't using a tripod, but the full moon looks
rad. That's a lighted hand coming out of the ground

With all the decorating, you would think I would have a party or at least invited some friends over for drinks. Nope. Besides me and Jackson, only one other friend (until now) enjoyed my efforts: Sara came over a couple nights before Halloween to get a drinks. And of course the people driving buy the house saw it.

I had my decorations up for 3 weeks, so I figured I did some pretty good neighborhood advertising: Hey, bring your kids here! I want to give them candy! (but I'm not creepy!!). The irony was, I wasn't even home for prime-time trick or treating - I was at beach bootcamp in Pacific Beach. I got home at 7:30 and ended up getting about a dozen kids. Way more than I expected based on last year at Matt's place and it has me excited about next year.

I made graves with mounds of dirt on my "lawn". For once my
lack of landscaping was a good thing.

I even got some some kids at 9:45 - and they weren't teenagers. They were around 8, with their dad. The San Diego Chargers had a 5pm home game on Halloween this year; I think Dad waited until after the game to take them out.

Stupid picture of me, but check out my spiders. That's also one glowing on my head.

Evil Jackson and the batkins.