I thoroughly enjoy Halloween and the great lengths many of our neighbors go to in decorating their yards and houses for the occasion. My own décor is a bit scant, but festive in its own way. My main requirement is that it all must fit into a plastic storage box that is just a bit larger than a shoe box.
I used to jot notes on a scrap of paper during Halloween night—the weather, a tally of trick-or-treaters, an observation or two—then toss it into the box to consult the next year when deciding how many treats to buy.
My Halloween notebooks
In 2009, I made a small notebook and copied the previous two years’ notes into it, and have kept a Halloween notebook ever since. I collaged the cover with some paper scraps, including orange tissue paper (I love using tissue paper in collages), and added some rubber stamp images of bats and a raven.
When my handmade notebook was filled up, I grabbed a Moleskin and decorated that in similar fashion, except I no longer had the Halloweenish rubber stamps I had used before. In a fit of decluttering a few years ago, I decided I was no longer into using rubber stamps and gave most of them to a local creative reuse store called Art Start. Soon after, I discovered that I do still like to use rubber stamps and have been acquiring them again ever since. I guess the moral of that story is that an object can spark no joy in a given moment and yet you will miss it when it’s gone.
Back to the notebooks. I find it quite enjoyable to read through them each year when we bring the box up from the basement a couple of weeks before Halloween. At first, I just check the tally from the last couple of years and assess how many leftover “treats” we still have—I quit handing out candy after a friend pointed out that (a) you don’t end up eating all those fun-size Snickers bars when you don’t have a slew of them sitting around, and (b) leftover tiny toys can be kept for the following year. Plus, kids love them.
During the pauses between clusters of visitors, I jot observations which, as it turns out, are worth recalling. For example, Craig noted in 2013 that the two little girls a few doors away (I’ll call them X and M) were too shy to come to the door; in 2014, I noted “Best costume: X as a castle.” In 2018, “X & co. (5 kids) were Harry Potter characters.” And, that same year: “A 21-month old in a dinosaur skeleton—with tail!” Also, our DIL brought our then-1-year-old grandson wearing a pirate costume.
The first year we gave out toys instead of candy was 2019, when I noted that the 1-ounce containers of Playdough were popular with older kids and that we ran out of bouncy eyeballs by 7.
Sometimes I add sketches to the notebooks, especially if it’s a slow night.
A couple more years’ costume observations are worth sharing. In 2022:
“Some very original homemade costumes including a cardboard-box TV set. A toddler as Baby Yoda was adorable. A little girl in a pink felt cape/poncho & crown had a heart-shaped wand, and when I called it a magic wand, she said, ‘It’s not a magic wand, it’s just pretend.’ ”
From 2025, which I also noted was a bit chilly with a light drizzle:
“We’re seeing a few inflated costumes, like the Portland and No Kings protests. Little kids are in cute costumes like bears or other animals, which also happen to be warm. School-age & tweens often have very original, sometimes homemade costumes—a cardboard something like a big jaw. Santa Claus!”
Happy Halloween! And many happy returns of the day.
