BOO! Bags

Years ago, when I lived in Arizona, there was a fun little sneaky tradition of Boo-ing your friends and neighbors at Halloweentime. That meant that you would leave a plate of cookies with a ghost sign on their front porch, and ding dong ditch them. That family would, in turn, hang the ghost in their window to fend off future Boo-ings, and they would pass the Boo on to two other families within 24 hours. It was so much fun to see the ghost signs popping up in windows all around the neighborhood as friends performed secret acts of kindness for one another. Really, the only unselfish thing going on at Halloweentime, if you ask me.

I saw on Lark and Lola a jazzed-up version of the Boo idea, and knew we just had to do it this year. Now Heather, of Lark and Lola is infinitely more creative and talented than I am, so instead of the handmade Boo! garland she included in her bags, I used the scrumptiously delicious Pumpkin Spice Caramel Corn and Chocolate Caramel Corn recipes from another favorite blog (I badly need to update my blogroll!), Picky Palate. Let me just tell you up front: If you're trying to decide how you'd best like to die, make yourself a batch of Pumpkin Spice Caramel Corn and get all cozy and then eat yourself to death. It will be well worth it.

Anyway.

So, the kids and I baked double batches of each caramel corn--plenty of jobs for all the kids to be helpers, from popping the popcorn, to picking out every unpopped kernal, to unwrapping the Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses.

Once it was cooling, we printed off Lark and Lola's Boo! poem (which she wrote herself), but she also included a link to other versions of Boo! poems. She even gives you a link to download her spooky Halloween font. She thinks of everything.

We glued the poems to the front of the bags.

Then we put some of each flavor caramel corn into clear bags and tied with Halloween ribbon, and put them into the black bags with purple tissue paper.

The last part was the most fun, and though it was a bit tricky to keep the Teenage Boy's attention through the entire process of creating the bags, it was not tricky to get him excited about delivering the bags in the cover of darkness and ding-dong-ditching our friends.

So much fun! We picked families that we thought would most appreciate the gift, and would be most likely to pass it on in the spirit of the fun. Families with little kids are a great choice. We took about an hour, once it was dark on Sunday night, and made our secret deliveries. No one was caught. (That we know of.) And we hope we made some families very happy, with plenty of time to Boo! their own friends.