It gets harder and harder each year, but you can still remember what it was like to be a kid, right? And Halloween? Man, only Christmas was more exciting.<\/p>\n
The best trick-or-treat houses were the ones that made you feel scared, then welcome. A little creeped out, then re-assured \u2014 and overloaded with candy.<\/p>\n
Here is how to be that house.<\/p>\n
You can get by tossing a handful of those red-and-black saltwater taffies in a back and saying \u201cHappy Halloween,\u201d but you want to be the cool house, so don\u2019t skimp on the candy. What is this costing you, $10, $20? Splurge a little. Make sure there is a variety, with a good mix of chocoloate and non-chocolate candies. And let the kids grab it themselves. Getting it rationed out like Oliver Twist is depressing.<\/p>\n
Put on a costume. Doesn\u2019t have to be anything fancy, but it does need to be something scary, like a vampire or a zombie or whatever. The time for your humor and irony was at the office Halloween party. Your job, now, is to play a character the kids will recognize as something they\u2019re supposed to be afraid of. Even better if you can leap out from behind a bush or something. You\u2019re not trying to make anybody cry, but you also don\u2019t want them walking away feeling like they just interrupted you from something else.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s amazing how much you can accomplish on Halloween without spending much money. \u00a0A \u201cghost\u201d is a balloon with a sheet over it. A zombie is a human-shaped figure wrapped in toilet paper. A little dry ice and some creative lighting can turn your porch from any other porch into something spooky to a kid. Take an hour and do something cool.<\/p>\n
If Elsa shows up at your door, ask her to sing \u201cLet it Go.\u201d If it\u2019s Freddy Kruger, be afraid. If it\u2019s one of those minion things \u2026 uh \u2026 make something up. The point is to have the kids walking away feeling like you were just as into it as they were.<\/p>\n
What makes anything fun, whether you\u2019re 5 or 50, is the enthusiasm of others, feeling connected, feeling like you\u2019re all having a good time. Create that vibe for your neighborhood trick-or-treaters, and become the most popular house on the block.<\/p>\n
And, with any luck, you won\u2019t get tricked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It gets harder and harder each year, but you can still remember what it was like to be a kid, right? And Halloween? Man, only Christmas was more exciting. The best trick-or-treat houses were the ones that made you feel scared, then welcome. A little creeped out, then re-assured \u2014 and overloaded with candy. Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}