Someone remind me to put a sign up next year, "If you're not wearing a costume don't ring the doorbell. No, your school sweatshirt is not a costume."
Do what I do. Tell them they have to sing a song or they don't get any candy. I usually suggest "I'm A Little Tea Pot".
Jilli, somehow I think you could get away with that easier than I could.
That's when you invoke the "Trick" part of "Trick or Treat"
I got candy from the little general store even though I wasn't dressed up. The other dude there suggested for my costume concept, "serial killer," on the premise that they look like everybody else.
That child is just so cute. What you might want to do is suggest to the mom to send a pic to the Oval Office. I know Michelle or Barack would get a kick out of that.
I just spent 15 minutes in the office bathroom cleaning blood off of myself and changing clothes, because I didn't want to be a messy vampire when we went to the theatre tonight. Which is why I had two bags of stuff with me when I came into work tonight.
I am still wearing my costume from work because I don't want to change until I can shower and I don't want to shower and miss trick or treaters (I have a
lot
of candy.)
Someone remind me to put a sign up next year, "If you're not wearing a costume don't ring the doorbell. No, your school sweatshirt is not a costume."
My neighborhood's average income is fairly low, so while I do kind of give the stinkeye to kids not in costumes, I have no idea what their family's financial circumstances are. And it's Halloween. They just want to go out and get candy like everyone else. So I don't really begrudge a mini Snickers to a kid who's not wearing a costume.
Teppy, I see your point, but I really don't think that was the case in most of these circumstances (they were very nicely dressed, just not in costume). And a lot of these kids were too old to really be trick or treating imho.
They were playing Christmas music at Target today. I happened to be pushing my niece around in her stroller at the time, so I started telling her in a sing song voice that Target was trying to give her auntie a nervous breakdown; she was very amused by this.