A non-North American Halloween

We tried something new this Halloween, our second in the southern hemisphere.  Last year we went trick-or-treating at one of the streets that is known for a lot of participation in the process.  We found it hot and frustrating.  The candy wasn't the right kind of candy, the walks between houses was too long, and there were minutes-long waits at the door to get a single wrapped hard candy.  I was hoping for a better experience this time around.

First for costumes.  Ruth wanted to be a witch.  Easy, right?  We went to Target.  No kids' witch costumes.  Kids' witch hats, and gross plastic witch fingertips, but no kids' costume.  Target had about six kids' costumes, six grown-up costumes, and a few random costume pieces.  Target is a terrible disappointment here.  I try to avoid it.   No luck there, we headed to Woolworths.  Woolworths only had adult witch costumes also, but I found the smallest one ($18) and said I could cut it down to fit her.  Isaac got a gross rubber skull mask ($5) and was satisfied, because he didn't GAF, he just wanted candy.  He wore it with his Dracula cape from last year and wore black clothes underneath.

Back at home, we opened the witch costume.  I successfully cut it down by shaving off about a foot of length, and making tucks on both sides of the sleeves so the neckline didn't reach her belly.  It looked pretty good if I do say so myself.  Then we opened the included witch hat.  Broken.  Back to Target for their witch hat ($3), and we were set to go.

This time, like last year, we went to a Halloween Extravaganza sponsored by the American Women's Association, which raises money for the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne.  For $10 each the kids participated in a few games, did some artwork, decorated their own cookies, and did themselves proud in the donut-eating contest.  Last year the Extravaganza was on a huge cricket oval and had food booths with grown-up food, not just sweets.  This year it was in a smallish car-park, but the kids had fun.

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The best part for me was they had honest-to-goodness candy corn and those candy-corn flavored pumpkins.  All bright artificial orange and wax and and sugar - I snagged a few off Isaac (who was feeling generous) and sucked them for as long as I could.  They tasted like home.  I know these are gross candies, but on this day they transported me.

See that pumpkin candy in the middle of the cookie?  NOT available in Oz. No idea where they got it from, but I snagged it.

On to the unexpected highlight of the day, which was that shops that had the Halloween Extravaganza sign in their window were also handing out candy to passing trick-or treaters.  We discovered this by accident when a lovely lady standing on the sidewalk tossed some Cadbury Flakes at the kids.  They were at first confused, then utterly delighted.  The entire street was packed with kids in costumes.  No fences around houses to navigate, little traffic on side streets, good parking.  Plus they had American candy. Laffy Taffy!  Hershey's!  And the good Australian candy - Freddo Frogs and other Cadbury delights.  Some hard candy that no one likes, and in some places they were just handed an unwrapped marshmallow, or an unwrapped gummy or a strip of sour candy to eat on the spot.

Have some unwrapped lollies little children . . . Ahahahaha!

Sadly by the time we got to some of the shops, they were already out of candy, which means although Australia is catching on to the whole Halloween thing, they are not quite ready to hang with the Yanks.

The weather was slightly cooler than last year, but we had a downpour mid-extravaganza and it was humid afterwards.  I miss cool Halloweens.  We didn't even carve pumpkins this year because they would have rotted so quickly in the heat.

At night we didn't bother buying candy to hand out because no one came to our door last year.  We left our light off.  This year kids rang our doorbell, even though the light was off.  They don't know the rules.  And I can't explain the rules to them because I don't think the rules are the same here.  Frustrating.   Trick-or-treaters woke me up at 9 when they rang the doorbell in an all-dark house.

 I spent a good part of the next day on Facebook looking at everyone's fabulous costumes in America, and it totally bummed me out that we couldn't participate in the same way.  Thanks to everyone for posting their great photos.  I enjoyed them thoroughly, I just wished we could have been there too.