Halloween Decorations & Candy Chute

 I've mentioned before that our neighborhood goes all-out for Halloween. So it only stands to reason that I've been pondering the best way to socially-distance the festivities. I figure trick-or-treating is outdoors and everyone's wearing masks anyway, we'll just need to be sure to keep some space between us and the next folks.

So we built a candy chute. Since I'm cheap, we cut the bottoms out and duct-taped cardboard oats containers together, then used some leftover spray paint. I'm sure it would have been faster to buy a plastic tube! My mom and neighbor and some other friends contributed to the cause, but we had a lot of containers already in the closet just waiting for a project.

My colleague's daughter really wanted the stack to reach the ceiling - this is the point where I had to stop taping them together in advance, since I didn't want it to be squashed or played with too much before the holiday, and this was a good place to tuck the chute away. You'll notice another sign of the times in the repurposed wetbag we keep on the closet doorknob for our dirty masks as we come in the door.

Here's Leah "helping"
 

She was pretty offended that she didn't get a turn with the spray paint, but she liked looking through the tube & out the other end. Here are the kids with their pumpkins, the candy chute, and the rest of the decorations. Look - there was a rainbow!

 

Leah's trying out her costume in advance and James has on a grumpy face.

 

Last night was the first lighting of the jack-o-lanterns. We never carve super far in advance since the squirrels will just eat the faces off, but this was pretty last-minute. I also bought a bee costume from a woman on Facebook yesterday afternoon so I'll be set. One of my coworkers at the library is borrowing the banana costume since her son's going as a monkey.

 

And then here are some photos of the annual pumpkin-carving. James did his all by himself with just a little help from Sam in the scooping-out department.

 

Amelie picked out a design, traced it on, and cut all the hard parts out by herself. I helped with some of the fence posts just to speed the process along a little bit, since she was still out there working after everyone else was done and Sam had separated the seeds out to roast and we'd cleaned everything up. It turned out nicely!

 

Leah's contribution was mostly to pick out the pattern. She did also stick the carving tool in the back of the pumpkin and call it a tail.

 

Sam put the wooden frame together out of 2 x 2's after I suggested propping it up on one of our dining room chairs. We tested it out about a dozen times with the candy bars we bought, and they go down if you give them a bit of a throw. The skittles packages from Grandma Mary and Papaw got caught, however - I think they have more edges and less weight to propel them downwards.

The plan is to put the amp out again and play some spooky music. We'll see how it goes!