Halloween Night

Our pumpkin visitors number EXPLODED this year. I think by creating our online presence on Facebook, we really got our name out there. We had a steady stream of trick or treaters and onlookers. Bill estimated that we came near having 1000 people. It was insane - there was pretty much always a crowd of 10 and sometimes up to about 60 people standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. Even at 9:00 pm, which in year's past was about quitting time, we had a huge crowd of onlookers. The last car showed up just before 10 pm, when we were about to start gagging and bagging. They had seen us on Facebook.

This year I made business cards to pass out with our Facebook and Instagram information on them, so we made sure we handed one to all of the adults at least. Many people that I tried to give one to said they already followed us on Facebook. We have over 1100 people on our page, which is kind of crazy to think about! It's awesome at the same time though. The people are the reason we do this! It was a lot of fun to stand and mingle with the crowds and answer questions this year.

Normally our questions are fairly basic and kind of annoying:
"Are those real pumpkins?"
"Did you carve those?"

But this year the questions were more thought-provoking. I got a lot of "How many hours did all of this take?" and "When did you guys start carving these?" (which was always met with huge disbelieving looks when I said "Monday.") So many people thanked us for doing it every year and several told me they came from other neighborhoods far away to trick or treat in our neighborhood just because of our house. (Sorry neighbors - we might have to start buying you each a bag of candy to hand out.)

I love hearing the kids when they're pointing out the characters the recognize and making sure Mom and Dad saw them. People get so excited to see something they know. Everyone loved the Duck Dynasty guys this year and I heard lots of excitement over my VW van pumpkin.

Because we had the pumpkins out for so long, Nick had to be a rock start with the candles all night - he was all over the yard relighting candles, adding new tealights, and dumping melted wax out of the pillars as they filled up. We had quite a system going.

I was even told by one couple that we were featured on News 8 in DFW - they had some photos from out website and told people where to go. That's how this couple knew to come see us, so that's pretty cool. I wish they had contacted us to do an interview. A gentleman from the Northwest Sun in Saginaw stopped by before sunset and filmed an interview with us and also the pumpkins about our display. That was pretty exciting!

Next year will have to be bigger. We've started something major now, and it's only going go grow from here. I love the challenge, even if I do have sore arms and boo-boos on my hands from carving and gutting.