Last night was our annual trunk-or-treat that our town puts on. I was worried that we wouldn’t have a good turnout this year because our boys made it to the football playoffs and we knew lots of people were going to be out of town.
Last year, I made up 150 bags because it was our first year doing the trunk-or-treat. In previous years, it was held at the school and everyone just walked through the school. This was great because even if the weather was bad, the kids could still get their treats. However, it switched over last year and a lot of us didn’t know how many kids to buy treat for. We decided that 150 would be enough.
Our theme was pirates so I decorated my mini-van to look like a pirate ship and dressed up as a pirate. It was an hour long trunk-or-treat and I was out of bags after the first half hour! I had included our November storytime schedule, a bookmark that has all our library information on it, some cheap candy and some toys from Oriental Trading Company. It was a lot of work ahead of time and we ended up running out so quickly that I knew I had to switch things up this year.
This year, we decided to do 300 bags. Again, we weren’t sure how many to allow for because our boys and their families were at football playoffs. We actually had a great turnout and I handed out 256 bags! Inside the bags this year, I put our November calendar, our library bookmarks and a bag of jellybeans. The first lucky 100 also got a glow-in-the-dark bookmark!
For our theme this year, I found a unicorn onesie and wore that. I decorated my mini-van with rainbows and clouds. It snowed on Halloween last year and was very cold so I dressed for warmth this year!
I’ve started thinking about next years Halloween. I wanted to just hand out the candy but we have enough bags left over to stuff them with library information and candy for one more year. I’m also starting to think about our theme for next year. Stay tuned! 🙂
I’m also really glad that I did decide to stuff the bags again this year because we had ten kids join us today for storytime! We usually only have around four and those four weren’t able to attend today. Both ladies who brought kids over said it was because of the storytime newsletter that I had included in the trunk-or-treat bags! One mom said her daughter wanted to come but she didn’t know when the storytime was. That tells me that I need to put more information in our local paper and in our front window. I’ve got to get the word out! Our other lady does daycare and brought her kids over to join us. I’m so glad they all came!
