Boo to You: Year #5

Even though I am slow to get stuff posted here, I am still doing those things that have some of you fooled into believing I am a really, really awesome mom. (Okay, for clarification, I am an awesome mom, just maybe not as awesome as you think. This is really not all that complicated, I promise.) So, here goes: Year 5 of the neighborhood "Boo Bags." (Wait, have I really been blogging for that long? Very nearly! Time flies, as they say.)

{Assorted Goodies for One "Boo Bag"}

This year, I didn't worry at all if the "Boo Bags" (containers) held the same contents or even if the "Boo Bags" themselves looked identical. (See, I'm learning to let go of some of the small stuff!) One was a cute Frankenstein takeout container that I found on clearance and set aside last year, and the other was the first thing I could find on hand at home -- a Scooby Doo Happy Meal bucket from some point when the grandparents babysat last October, apparently.) And it's okay. I finally realized that nobody in the neighborhood is comparing notes, here. So don't stress over that!

Also, don't feel like you need to spend a lot of money. These were for sure under $5 each since I put stuff away after last Halloween, but even if you're going out and getting things right now after reading this, it can be super affordable. This year, I had two Halloween dog bandannas to give away, so naturally we selected houses that I knew had little doggies. That was my only criteria, really.

{One Finished "Boo Bag"}

{Another Finished "Boo Bag"}

Besides the doggie bandannas and assorted goodies (like notepads, orange or black votive candles, non-scary Halloween gel clings -- no food this year), I also enclosed the following:

• We've Been Boo'd Sign (printed on orange construction paper -- although after the fact, I realized that white would have made more sense for the ghost design) -- 3 of these (one for the recipient of our "Boo Bag" and two more for them to pass along.
• Poem/Directions -- again, 3 sets, including 2 to pass along.

Then, Logan and I passed these out while his big sissy was at school. (Thankfully, she didn't take major issue with this.) He was very enthusiastic with his help! This was about two weeks ago, and Mia insists that she has seen one of the neighborhood dogs sporting one of the "Boo Bag" bandannas. I honestly am not sure if this is true since I didn't see it myself, but how fun if that's the case. Have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!

P.S. If you're interested, here is what we did for our "Boo Bags" in years past:
2013
2012
2011
2010

And Then the Doorbell Rang...

I realize that it's been a while since I have done a post. Really, I have tons of stuff to say, but I wanted to make it truly count this time around. You see, this is my 500th post! In my head, I had built this up to be something bigger than it really is, thinking that I needed to write something that would be a summation of all that I am and all that this blog stands for. And now, I have decided to end my self-imposed writer's block by simply telling a story of something that made me smile at a time when I really needed it.

In addition to getting myself worked up over the significance of what to write next, I got super busy with Halloween preparations  -- which I am sure many other moms out there can relate to. I actually lost count of how many hours I spent making my little man's Lightning McQueen Halloween costume (which came out pretty cool, and I promise I will post more on that later). Also, I may have said "yes" to taking on yet another project when I really should have said "no, not right now." And, I felt down because nobody was coming to a party that I had planned. Rationally, I knew that this wasn't personal, but it was upsetting nonetheless.

By Thursday evening, I was overtaxed, and I was definitely feeling it. The house looked like it was falling apart and I was getting pretty grumpy with the kids. I was exhausted in the evenings, looking around and feeling like I had accomplished nothing for an entire week -- except for yelling at my kids. (So, it turned out to be a blessing that no guests were coming to my party after all. This saved me from having to do one more thing: a "company clean!")

Then, Friday morning came, and things were starting to look up. After dropping Mia off at school, Logan and I headed to our MOPS group meeting, where I got to hear a great speaker share ways that we can do more "missions" as a family. This gave me hope for finding a solution to yet another thing that was weighing me down: the kids are currently going through a phase in which they seem to have a bad case of the "gimmes" -- not a good thing with the holidays fast approaching! After having some chat time with other mamas, and getting a much-needed hug, I left feeling excited about doing some random acts of kindness.

All the rest of that day, I spent countless hours hard at work transforming a cardboard box into a costume, because after the party was cancelled I realized that I would be taking the kids to a costume party, after all. This meant that my deadline was pushed up, waaaaaaay up, from this coming Thursday -- Halloween -- to the preceding Saturday! I was completely in a trance and had no idea what anybody else in the house was up to. I actually asked Brett at one point, "When did the toys get picked up from the living room floor?" and he told me, "You were painting." I asked something else, and got the same response, "You were painting." Then, I realized I missed quite a lot during that lost time.

The good news was that it came out well and Logan was very happy with his costume. They had a fun time at the party, but after 3 hours of treats and games, I was drained. We ended up doing a movie night just to get through the evening. Then after the kids went to bed, I tried to tackle some of the mess that had been left to accumulate "while I was painting." After 30 minutes or so, though, I was worn out. I had just sat down to take a break.

And then the doorbell rang...

Honestly, I was not at all happy about this. I was 8:45 at night, and my kids were (hopefully!) asleep. I glared at the dog and warned her not to do her usual machine-gun, someone's-at-the-door-and-I-must-alert-you! bark. Amazingly, she listened, but I was still alarmed at the thought of answering the door.

Who could be ringing the doorbell at this hour? Nervously, I looked out the window, and not seeing anybody there, I asked Brett what to do. I was thinking, Oh great! Somebody's pulling a Halloween prank on us and we're going to find a bag of flaming dog doo on the porch... or something worse! My next thought was, I hope it's not that Kirby vacuum salesman. He was ridiculously hard to get rid of! Brett suggested that we turn off the porch light, and after doing that, we noticed a large vehicle -- a van? -- parked on the street, slightly obscured by the neighbor's trees. Then, I tried to quiet my apprehensive and over-active imagination, It could be somebody doing something nice. You know we just talked about random acts of kindness at MOPS. They're waiting to see if we get the gift!

Feeling emboldened by my more positive thinking, I opened the front door...

And I found a purple plastic tub loaded with goodies: a preschool fishing game, a dice game meant for kids Mia's age, two bottles of flavored sparkling water, some sprinkle-covered chocolate doughnut holes, Halloween pencils, and glow-in-the-dark necklaces! There was also a note explaining that we had been boo'ed. (Now here was something I could relate to, after having done this for the past four years in our neighborhood!)

It turned out that nobody was out to get me, after all. Some sweet, thoughtful mama (and while I don't know for certain who is responsible, I have to assume that the most likely "suspects" are my MOPS friends) gave us everything we needed to have a fun family game night! She may have known that I was having a rough week (self-inflicted, mainly, but rough despite it all), or she might not have even realized that I was feeling overwhelmed with everything at that moment. Either way, I hope she knows that she brought a much needed smile to my face...

A smile that I intend to pay forward -- just not at night. That's when all the scary stuff happens -- at least in my imagination!

Boo to You: Year #4

I love Halloween! It is my second-favorite holiday, right after Christmas, and I think it can be so much fun! Okay, I don't love all of the blood and gore that I seem to be seeing more and more of, but that's not the point. Halloween can and should be fun for kids of all ages, which is why our family once again initiated "boo bags" in the neighborhood. This is a simple and inexpensive way to spread a little holiday cheer.

We first started this in 2010, and I don't think it spread beyond the first two houses where we delivered our "boo bags."

Then, we tried again in 2011, and the results were pretty much the same.

Last year, Brett was a little surprised to see me at it again. However, come Halloween, I was pretty darn excited when we actually received our own "boo bag!" This meant that it was possibly catching on, or at least that someone figured out who started it and passed it back to us. Anyway, it was all new stuff -- not what we had included in our "boo bags" -- so this gave me hope that people were ready to join in on the fun!

This year's bags were the simplest (and probably cheapest) yet. Knowing that I would continue this tradition, I found items on clearance after last Halloween and put them aside for this year. The bags themselves were small canvas trick-or-treat totes that I found at Meijer for 14 cents apiece. The insides of the "boo bags" included items I had saved for this occasion and other little things I had on hand such as:

• a small package of animal crackers (left over from soccer snacks)
• some Pixie Stix (left over from the rainbow pinata)
• a few suckers (I am guessing that these were left over from some other birthday party that the kids attended at some point...)
• jack-o'-lantern pencil erasers (I had gotten these a couple years back on clearance at Target.)
• Halloween pencils (Also from that same shopping trip to Target, if I remember correctly.)
• plastic vampire teeth (These came in a 24-pack that I got on clearance at Kroger. I put 3 sets per bag into 2 baggies, and then I placed each baggie into each "boo bag.")
• a set of black and orange paper bag luminaries (These were also on clearance at Meijer - 30 cents for each package of 8.)
• window gel clings that spell out "Boo to You!" (Perfect, right? These I got either at Walmart or Kroger last year, for 50 cents each, and I bought all they had at both stores. I also got some other Halloween gel cling window sets that were not creepy or gory, which is why I can't remember exactly which store they came from. The moral is: just buy things after Halloween and make sure to get them when you see them because they will be gone by the next time you get to that store.)
• 3 copies of the "You have been BOO'ed" poem, explaining the activity -- one for each recipient of our "boo bags" and two more for them to pass along to neighbors.
• 3 copies of the "We've been BOO'ed" sign -- one for each recipient to put in a window, door, or even on the garage door -- and two more to pass along to neighbors.

That's it. I didn't add cute ribbon or do any rubber stamping or anything else to make it more decorative. (The idea is to make it fun, not to spend lots of time making it look perfect.) I didn't make excessive copies of the papers in hopes that this would help it spread throughout the neighborhood, as I had tried in the past. (This didn't work anyway, so save yourself some paper and printer ink!)

I just kept it really, really simple -- and cheap! It cost me a little over a dollar, and certainly no more than $2 per bag. (14 cents for the bag, 50 cents for the gel clings, 30 cents for the luminaries, and add few more cents for things that I have forgotten the cost of. When you break it down per unit, this was very affordable.)

Once we had our "boo bags" assembled, Logan got into our red wagon, I slipped the leash on the dog, and we went for a walk around the neighborhood. (It is always nice when we get perfect weather for these special deliveries!) Once we had selected our candidates (people who were not home, and who had not gotten "boo bags" in the past), we quickly slipped them into their mailboxes, and kept on moving. 

He had a lot of fun delivering our secret packages. In fact, it was hard for him to contain his excitement as we were headed down to the bus stop at the end of the day and he noticed one neighbor retrieving the "boo bag" from her mailbox. "Look! Mrs. T. got our bag!" I reminded him, "Shhh. Remember, it's a secret," and he replied, "Oh, yeah... right!" Not that I was upset, mind you. It's nice to know that someone else is having fun with our "boo bags", and I am just enough of a cock-eyed optimist to believe that eventually more neighbors will participate in the fun...

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

Boo to You: Year #2

Last year, I decided to try something new in our neighborhood. We delivered Boo boxes to a couple of neighbors. It was fun, but it didn't spread as far as I hoped. So this year, I am starting with a couple of changes. Instead of giving the first neighbors their treats along with the Boo sign (printed on orange construction paper) and note (printed on regular computer paper), I made enough copies to spread throughout the entire neighborhood and put them in two plastic scrapbook page sleeves. One sleeve goes along with the first Boo box recipient and the other goes to the second recipient. My hope is that by making all the copies in advance, people will have less of an excuse to not keep it going. I also re-typed the directions so that two fit per page, and added that a garage door would also be a good location to display the Boo sign. At the bottom of the notes for my first two recipients, I added a hand-written explanation that for all of the copies, and added that they are the first ones so it's up to them to keep the fun going! My fingers are crossed that this will work (assuming that I choose the first neighbors wisely).

Overall, this year's Boo boxes are cuter than last year's. I again found take-out style containers. They are black paper with cobwebs and bats on them, and I think they came from Michael's or Jo-Ann, but I don't remember which exactly. It was after Halloween last year. I also bought two pumpkin shaped kitchen scrub sponges and two sets of cute wooden candy corn paper clips from Michael's on clearance after Halloween last year. I included some jack-o'-lantern erasers that I got on clearance at Target last year and a small package of peanut butter filled cheese sandwich crackers. Ours are from Sam's Club, but you can get them at any grocery store. There is no candy in this year's Boo boxes because I didn't have any in the house. I cut out the directions using crimping scissors, rolled them up, and tied them with a ribbon. Then I closed up the containers and tied lots of different ribbons onto the handle. They are all "Halloween colors" -- orange, black, green, purple. I am really happy with the results.

Boo to You!

I'm trying to start something fun in the neighborhood. The kids and I are "Booing" the neighbors. I filled cute little take-out style containers with goodies and then we delivered them. The containers are green and say "Trick or Treat" all over them, and I found them at the Dollar Store awhile back. In each box, I included some tea lights, candy, a small hand lotions from Bath and Body Works, and a little apple shaped photo frame magnet. It was quick and inexpensive to do since I already had all of this stuff on hand. Next, I printed off signs and poems that I found online and included them in the goodie boxes. I figured there was no point in reinventing the wheel. Here's the link:

http://familycrafts.about.com/od/halloweengames/a/youvebeenbooed.htm

I printed the BOO signs on orange construction paper and the poem on plain computer paper.
Attached to the handle of each take-out goodie box are the following instructions (printed on orange construction paper): 

You have been “Boo’d”!  Please keep it going by following these directions: 

1.    Enjoy your treat! 

2.    Place the BOO sign on your front door or so it’s visible in a window. 

3.    Within 2 days, make 2 treats, 2 copies of this note, and 2 BOO signs. 

4.    Secretly deliver to 2 neighbors without a BOO. 

5.    Keep an eye on nearby front doors to see how far and fast it spreads by Halloween!

I cut these out with crimping shears, affixed an eyelet and a little candy embellishment to each, and then tied them to the handles using raffia (which I had saved from some packaging). Lastly, I clipped on a short length of "Trick or Treat" ribbon with a small black clip. Now, we wait and see who plays along.

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