Candy Dish Blog

Congratulations to Ann Taylor, Jeff Garlick and Kelby, who are our three winners in the Halloween Candy Giveaway. Ann, Jeff and Kelby – please email me your postal address and a phone number and we will get your parcel out to you as soon as we can.

Many thanks to everyone who entered!

The winning entries (in no particular order):

Ann
My favorite memory is actually from taking my own child out for his first trick-or-treating excursion when he was just over 2 years old. He looked absolutely adorable, if I do say so myself, in his lion costume…complete with a fringe of “mane” around his face. We taught him the proper Halloween protocol and practiced and practiced all day, making sure he knew to say “Trick or Treat” (and not be too shy!) and “Thank You!” at each home. We practiced at home, we practiced at our friends’ house, and we even had a last-minute practice before getting out of the car at our destination neighborhood. He was perfect. Poised. Confident. And ready for candy!

As we approached that first house, we were so excited at this “first” event. With our video camera ready, we watched as our little one ran to the doorway, eager to show off his new trick-or-treating skills. He rang the doorbell and anxiously waited. The door opened to reveal a smiling homeowner with a large bowl of candy in her hands. Apparently that did it. Everything we had rehearsed so perfectly disappeared in an instant when the big, beautiful bowl of candy appeared. With a huge grin on his face, our little one opened his mouth and blurted out “Candy in bag?!” Oh well. Not quite what we had hoped for, but he obviously understood the important part of Halloween!

Jeff
I don’t remember the year but I still remember both the disappointment and the joy.

When I was in grade school, OH SO MANY years ago, Trick Or Treating was SUCH a big deal and so was the costume! One year, ON Halloween, I had to go home early before the costume parade with a VERY bad fever and was sick, both in body and spirit! The big day and night and I was burning up and shivering and not from scary movies. I was VERY disappointed to say the least!

A neighborhood friend and some of her friends rang the doorbell that night but not to Trick Or Treat. She and her friends had gone door to door and collected a bag of candy for me! I went from sad and sick to the happiest kid you’ve ever seen! It was such TRUE friendship and now, at the age of 42, I can STILL remember that special Halloween and the generosity of a friend that helped make my worst Halloween into my BEST one!

Kelby
My favorite Halloween candy memory is kind of odd because it’s an adult one. As a kid, I lived in a suburban neighborhood with tons of houses and townhouses. We probably hit a hundred on a typical Halloween. So that was my childhood experience. We lived briefly in Northwest Indiana in the small town of Kouts.

Our first Halloween there, we were afraid our daughter (3 at the time) would have nowhere to trick or treat. On our road, there was only a handful of houses… and only one other house had kids. We talked to neighbors and that mom, and ultimately the neighborhood had its first candy handing out in, apparently, several years. Most of our neighbors were older, and most actually had grandchildren. They were so excited that they all got full-sized candy and cakes.

It was amazing. We went with our daughter and our neighbor plus her two kids. At each house, we spent probably 15-20 minutes visiting with our neighbors. I was so afraid my daughter wouldn’t get much, and in the end she had a huge bag filled with actual Snicker bars and all this cool candy loot that she never would have gotten in an urban or even suburban setting.

The night was a nasty, rainy, cold one, but it was probably the coolest Halloween I’ve ever experienced. We don’t live there anymore, but that Halloween will always be special to me. There are some great aspects to living in the country. Shoot, we didn’t even do the examination of candy for anything dangerous, which I did every year as a kid in the late 70s and 80s!