Crepe Pumpkin Candy Packets

A couple years ago, I decided to go all-out on the behind-the-scenes festivities on Halloween night. I made a beef stew with a holiday wine-laced broth, filled bowls with mixed nuts and candy, loaded a basket with shiny red apples, and spread out a few hot appetizers. Looked like a pretty cool Halloween bash forming. I figured it would be worth it since some of my coworkers usually showed up to see my display, along with a hundred people my parents and sister invited - none of which are all that into Halloween. Topping it off was the annual crockpot filled with spiced wine, cranapple juice, and cinnamon sticks. That's always a highlight with my coworkers - hot spiced wine while getting the grand tour of the display. My instructions are very clear - "Mom, I have some people coming over later, so don't turn the crockpot off. Even if you think I'm done with it, just leave it on." She nervously turns it off, and heating up ceramic mugs of spiced wine in the microwave at the end of the night has become another annual tradition.

Nobody ate the nuts, or the apples. Two people tried the stew. The bowl of Halloween M&Ms was empty.

That same year, I made crepe paper pumpkins with candy and soft squishy eyeball toys inside. Got the instructions from the October Martha Stewart magazine. Took a long time to do and they looked really neat. I don't remember how many I made, but I gave them all out. I'd say that 90% of the trick or treaters gave me a look as if I were dropping a bar of soap into their bags of candy. As a child, on Halloween night, if I got a soft crepe paper pumpkin obviously filled with candy, I probably would have taken it home and fallen asleep holding the little orange thing - trying to figure out what was inside it without wanting to tear it open. Counting the pieces of candy with my fingertips through the paper. It probably would have been mid-November before I ripped the crepe paper skin. I really can't imagine what was so confusing to them. Maybe they thought they weren't getting candy, that I was pulling a fast one on them. That they were filled with raisins.

In the morning hours of November 1st that year, after I had broken down the Halloween display and was heading to my car to drive home and go to bed, I looked up the street and saw a tiny orange pumpkin on the asphalt. One of my crepe paper pumpkins. It was un-torn and perfect. I drove home with it on the dashboard. I ate the candy in the morning and played with the soft squishy eyeball for the next month. I think I brought it to work and it's still probably somewhere in the office covered with lint and dust.

Image source.

Reminds me of the time I brought authentic Christmas Crackers to my parents' house for Christmas. "Who do you think YOUUU are? The Queen of England?" That sort of thing.