A Boo-tiful Mind

For the past two years, we have "Boo'd" our neighbors and even though it didn't really spread like I had hoped, I have to keep trying. My husband came home from work yesterday, saw my stuff spread on the counter and said, "Oh, you're doing that again this year?" He laughed when I responded, "Yes, I have this delusion that people will participate if I do it enough!" Really, it has to catch on at some point, right? And if not, then in about 10 more years, I will have given small gifts to everyone in the neighborhood (which is nice, don't you think?)

This year I kept it very simple: brown lunch bags, items from the pantry (fruit snacks, candy left over from the pinata), and a couple items from Dollar Tree (cute candy corn socks, a yellow maple leaf votive holder, and an orange pumpkin scented tea light -- nothing creepy or possibly offensive as far as I could tell; Halloween should be fun for everyone in my opinion.) I put the items in the bag along with the BOO sign, and two more copies of the poem and BOO sign for them to pass along, and just stapled it shut. Then, I affixed the poem to the front of the bag, added a fun stamp and a little medallion that I made on orange card stock using another couple stamps from the same set plus a little bit of jack-o-lantern ribbon. The link for the poem and sign I used last year and the year before didn't seem to work so I searched and found this very cute version, which is in black and white, perfect for saving ink and making it easier for people to share in the fun. Once they were packaged up, I dropped them off in two mailboxes on my way to the dentist. Maybe I am nuts, but I think this is a fun, easy, and inexpensive way to celebrate Halloween and get people in the neighborhood to interact with each other (albeit secretively, but still...), and I am just going to keep doing it in the hopes that other people will join in.

See my previous attempts at spreading joy in our kind of boring, everybody-mind-your-own-business neighborhood:
Year #1 
Year # 2