Grinch. The first year I lived in my new house I decorated and bought a huge amount of candy. No one showed up. The second year I didn't decorate and bought a small amount of candy. No one showed up. The next year I didn't decorate or buy anything and one little group showed up (of course). I didn't answer the door as I had absolutely nothing for them. Turns out there really aren't any little kids in my neighborhood...I think the little group was from an adjacent neighborhood. I don't have kids so I didn't notice that before Halloween came around.

Grinch. I have been sick all week and am still sick. I don't have the energy to get up and down for the few kids that will come. The neighborhood has aged a lot in the 20 years I've been here.

Oh no, I not only left Elery and David here to pass out candy to the nearly 400 trick or treaters, Amanda and I took Spiderman and The Princess and walked all over town for a couple of hours. Lots of houses here in town didn't have treats either, but it was mostly because they were out with their own kids, trick or treating.

Because you are such an inspiration to me, LindaC, I took out all the Heath Bars. David di his part by saving the kids from those Reese's Pieces. Peanut allergies, you know.

Annie

We live in a rural area now so had a total of 10 kids tonight. That's one thing I miss about suburbia.

However, there are now so many alternative Halloween parties, tricky trays, etc. that many kids seem to no longer go door-to-day.

No grinches here! Lots of trick or treaters tonight -- it's still going on here, and I expect it may go later than usual because of it being a weekend night. I love to see the kids out having fun. I love holidays!

I would be happy if we only would get some Trick or Treaters, but alas, in the 7 years we have lived here we have not had even one!

There are just a few kids on our road, but one household is super religious and doesn't believe in Halloween, and the other brings her kid into town where she can get a bigger haul! One other kid that I know of but I am not sure what they do, I have only ever seen this girl a couple of times.

So I am nota grinch, just not lucky enough to have kids come around. When we lived in our last house, tho, I really enjoyed seeing all the kids all dressed up.

Linda

We've not had one trick or treater here in 9 years either. I don't know where all the "breeders" live but they are obviously not in my neighborhood! I dressed Odo up and walked around the block and saw only other adults walking dogs. I guess dogs are the "kids" of this area!

It was raining most of the evening here, but I still got about 40 kids from tiny ones all the way up to a few teenagers. Great costumes overall.. only a few lame ones that wore a Phillies tee shirt and went as "Phillies Phans" but over all a lot of creativity!

Lots of options for the kids to choose from - I think I bought 8 different flavors of stuff (some were multiple bags of the same flavor).

Alexa

I lit my Pumpkin, but only 2 kids so far. Lots in the past. Do you think it might have something to do with the H1N1 virus going around? Diana55

We were not home tonight, but I left my light on and several bowls full of candy on our front porch for kids to help themselves. When we came home they were all empty. I don't know when they ran out. We did this one other year, and when we returned home we still had a little bit of candy left in one of the bowls.

None. We usually get just a couple but this time nothing, at least not while we were home. We're at the bottom of a hill though, close to the end of houses, so there's little ROI for kids to wander down here. Can't say I blame them.

Town on the other hand was mobbed. Trick-or-treat hours were from 11-6. For the most part the stores participated. By mid afternoon quite a few stores had hung signs saying, "Sorry, we're out of candy." Some were nicely printed with borders and all, making me wonder what time they were made and hung. And I heard more than one person comment when passing an "out of candy" sign on.... a candy store!

Alexa, I agree the Phillies T-shirts are lame. Should have worn Yankees. ;-)

Oh yeah, boo to that Phillies tee shirt - definitely should have worn a Yankee shirt!

No grinches here - decorations, scary pumpkins that light up and lots of Snickers!

By your definition, we were Grinches. I would prefer to say instead, that we chose not to participate. Halloween is normally a festive time for me, but our current neighborhood doesn't have a lot of small kids anymore and the neighbors keep to themselves, which has been hard for me to get used to. I looked forward to Halloween and used to decorate, light the torches, put on scary sounds, and leave my front door open with the inside light on a goblin or ghost I'd created, so people would know we were home. Even when I did all that, I never had more than 10 or 12 around here. The last couple of times we participated here, we had teenagers and adults trick or treating that were taller than me. (That freaked me out, and was a major clue that Halloween has changed, at least around here. Sometimes I intensely dislike my neighborhood for the lack of community interest!) Another town I lived in was really fun at Halloween, and one year I probably had 200 kids stop by. (We actually had to make a candy run.) That felt different too as I was younger then, and had friends with young kids that I knew were stopping by. (I suppose that made it more fun.) I remember passing out (gummy) leeches to the kids I knew and hanging bats on the porch, while real bats flew around in the palm trees next door. At that time, we lived in a Victorian house, so the setting was perfect for dressing up like vampires and spooking the older kids. Now that was fun!

Halloween is a big deal on my street and I enjoy it. I live on a street of smaller homes. It's a circle so we get very little car traffic, and we have sidewalks. We are surrounded by million dollar (and more!) mansions. So , all the kids from the surrounding area come to our street. I like it. The kids are funny. I lost count -- I think there were about 100 kids.

From 4 - 6 we have a block party and all the kids dress up and some of the parents. It stopped raining long enough to get it in. I thought no one would come because of the rain but they were a determined bunch and just slogged right through the rain.

It's fun. One very little girl took about five minutes deciding which candy she wanted even though I said she could have as many as she wanted. She was adorable.

Some neighbors do turn off the light and go out for dinner. Guess they'd rather spend $50 on a nice meal than on candy.

Hub and I dressed up, lit the jack-o-lantern candles, set a full size witch on the porch and greeted a whole slew of ghosts and goblins, princesses and assorted other characters with good candy. It was fun, but I must admit it was more fun when there were more kids in the neighborhood, when our kids were young and we were dressing them up and escorting them around.

I did get to make an Amelia Bedelia costume for my 27-yo daughter last week...now that was fun! She looked terrific, too.

We always try to be here for Halloween and have enough candy. Sometimes our society over emphasizes strangers as potential evil. Halloween is a counter-point to that. And we always enjoy seeing the kids in costumes.

I was so thrilled that we'd finally have trick-or-treaters again this year! There have been no other kids and no trick-or-treaters on our tiny block (8 houses, another low ROI street) for the longest time, but this past year, we got two new families with 3 and 5 little ones. So finally!

In celebration, I bought full-sized candy bars! (Want 'em back next year) Handed out about 15 of them, so still a few for me...

We had a great time! When we first moved here, 11 years ago, there were only two families with kids. Now, there are tons. We went through nearly 10 pounds of candy last night. My DH decorated the yard with tombstones and dead bodies, and lots of other stuff. Three out of four of my kids came home with at least a 4 lb bag of loot (yes, we weighed it, lol!). The 4th kid doesn't really like candy, so if he didn't like what was being offered, he just didn't take any. I kept saying, "what about mommy and daddy???" We are donating at least a 1/3 of the candy to troops in Iraq, along with Girl Scout cookies :)

Today, we are spreading my dad's ashes (who passed away about 10 years ago), along with the ashes of his 4 dogs and 2 cats. My kids and I made commemorative stepping stones for the event. We thought All Saints Day was an appropriate day for something like this.

DH is firmly in the Grinch camp. He prefers to stay upstairs and to himself. I love Halloween! I always decorate the porch and usually I'm outside the whole time the kids are out. One of the most fun years was decorating the porch like Miss Havisham's rotten wedding feast with creepy crawlies, cobwebs, rotten food and layers of dirt. The kids were invited up for a cup of tea. I had to stop some of them from actually drinking it!

claire de luna, you are welcome any Halloween.

Grinch here. I had something else I wanted to do, so I did. I've done it the past two years here, and if I'm here and have nothing else I want to do next year, I probably will do it then. But given most people in this neighborhood are invisible the rest of the year, I don't feel too guilty.

Next to Christmas, Halloween was the next biggest holiday in my family. My Dad used to set up the yard. We're talking 30+ years ago before it was the thing to do. Dad was ahead of his time. Anyway, I left the DH with candy to hand out and went to my Mom's to help her. Yes, I'm a Halloweenie! I didn't dress up but wanted to!

Even though it was cold and very windy, they started at 2 pm and the last one I had was at 10 pm. My favorites are the very small ones that can barely say trick or treat.

2pm?? We don't see T or Ts until 6pm. Our small street has aged out on kids who trickortreet.

We went to DD's house to see the Bumble Bee Transformer and the Pink Unicorn off on their trick or treeting. Then we stayed to hand out candy. They had well over 100, most I suspect, were not from this neighborhood as they were followed by a car or van--this is a very walkable neighborhood. Every time I would say "I've never seen you before" the response was "oh, we are new to the neighborhood" or "we just moved here".

We left when our babies came home at 7:30pm; DD said she had treaters until 10:30.

DH and I always do a big thing at our house too. Graveyard, sound effects, fog machine, etc. We always dress up and hand out candy. Dh dresses up as a "dummy" and sits very still in a chair at the end of our driveway. The kids crack me up because they really work themselves up in a lather trying to figure out if he is "real" or not. When they least expect it....MUUUWHAA-haa-haa...he jumps up and they screammmmm!

It's really funny as they know he's going to do it, and he's done the same thing for years, so they expect it, but still love it. So do we!

We got around 200 kids, and of course we handed out things that made noise (along with the candy). It's a lot of work, but we really enjoy it. The parents and the kids usually thank us for all our effort.

I admit it...I have been a grinch in the past-well the last few years that we lived in Philadelphia.
You have to keep in mind that where we lived it was a rough area of the city and so not too many "little" kids would come around. You would however, get a lot of older kids-you know the ones with attitudes and big mouths.
No costumes to speak of-just maybe a sports themed tee shirt or jersey if that.
What I thought was funny is that these older kids would come out of their homes to trick or treat, yet no one handed out candy from their homes. (sigh)
It was unsafe to open your doors in my old neighborhood so I would turn out the lights, go upstairs and watch a movie with the kids.

This year was very different!
I have some halloween decor to put out-stuff from the old days. I even found some old costumes that I made for the kids.
On Friday a few of Drews new friends pulled up and had with them 4 pumpkins which they sat out on the driveway and carved. I thought it was a fun thing to do since Drew hasn't lived there too long and when they left they left the carved pumpkins behind for us to keep-kinda a welcome to the area gift....so sweet and they did a great job carving too!!

All in all we had about 50 kids-I had way more candy than I really needed but keep in mind it was raining off and on plus there was a baseball (world series) game on which I am sure was a distraction.

I had a great time sitting out when I could and talking to the neighbors...next year I will have a better idea of volume and will get more decor to make the house look good!!

Cheers!
Susie

I love the trick-or-treaters and we hand out candy every year I've lived there, which is 15. When I was a kid, I so looked forward to Halloween so the least I can do is hand out candy as an adult. It's fun. We get a lot of traffic on our street but the last to come was at 9 so we had a lot of the night left to ourselves. Along with the candy, Vicki always likes to put those little clementines in the big bowl and I find it surprising how many kids actually take the fruit.

I moved a few months ago and there are no trick or treaters where I live now because there are no children in my area.

The churches here have something called "Trunk or Treat" where the church members fill their vehicle trunks with treats and park in the church parking lot and all children are welcome to go from car to car. Then there are many other such functions on Halloween night too in order to keep meanace down.

I really used to love giving candy to all of the little kids who came to trick or treat a few years ago. Then, like Claire said we started getting adults much taller than I am and people were also being driven in from across town by carloads so that's when I started turning my light off. So call me a grinch when it comes to Halloween.