I never thought about putting the candy at the edge of the yard.  The only concern I have about that is the street and the crazy drivers.  Although this year I am contacting the local police to let them know about the house for a couple of reasons.  One, and the main one, is to keep the kids safe from predators, but to also help keep theft down on my stuff.

So, thank you, another great idea to think about.  And WILKSTER, should you ever want some of my TOT's I will gladly send them your way if I could.

Hey Spiderfreak and ScreaminScott,

Thanks for the ideas.  I do have all of the materials to make the cemetary fence, I just didn't do it last year.  I do like the idea of the lights to show the path (especially since part of the theme this year is a dark carnival) but the only problem with that is that where I live there is ALOT of light.  I have a real hard time getting enough darkness to get the right feel.  Although if I use maybe something like black rope lights (I have one already so I know they are dim but still enough to grab attention).

I do like the idea of making the goodie bags.  We don't let the kids in the cancy dish, my mom hands out the candy.  Hence the problem when they bunch up.  The only thing is that we don't hand out chocolate but we do hand out like willy wonka and stuff like that.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want the kids to feel jipped.  Money is a real issue for us, but it may be an idea we give a try.  The only other thing about the goodie bag is we never know how many kids we will have.  The last couple of years due to the cold and Halloween being in the middle of the week, our numbers were REALLY down.  I went from 300-350 kids to maybe a 100.  This year we are planning to have a huge crowd.  My haunt has gotten huge word of mouth and we are expecting hopefully 400-500 maybe more.  So when we pass out the candy by hand we can adjust the amout we hand out.  With the bags we won't be able to.  I guess it all comes down to planning ahead.

As for the kids, I find in our area it's not so much the older kids pushing through it's the younger ones that WANT the candy.  The older kids are more interested in the props and the yard (and I'm talking the teenagers here!).  We live on the same block as a school and a couple of churches so the kids go there first then come to us.  I think it makes for a really long time for them so they are tired and just want the candy and go home.

I do want to thank all of you for all of your great ideas!  This has helped alot.  You guys are great!

I too have a problem with the kids bunching up.  I don't think I'm ever going to solve that problem.

But to keep things moving, I make snack bags to hand out, rather than just handing out candy, or letting them pick their own.  I usually put 2-3 miniature candy bars and a small cheap toy (from Oriental trading or from halloween sales the previous year) in a Halloween party favor bag.  The bags can be found for about 40 for a dollar at the grocery store.

It's a fair amount of work to make up about 250 of these each year.  But it accomplishes several things

• It makes it faster to hand out the candy, reducing the mob and getting them on their way
  
• There's no kids reaching into the candy bowl