Boo Baskets for Halloween

[PeasOff]

Is anyone planning on making these for their kid(s)?

If so, what are you putting in them?

Don’t forget 30 white chocolate coins in a bag.

(Whispers) wrong board... I posted this on chat not AIBU.

Complete over the top nonsense, just carve a pumpkin?!

What bunch of miserable gits.

I think the label is maybe what's gotten peoples backs up 😂

I always buy arts and crafts bits that are Halloween themed for the half term break to keep DD busy. I also do Christmas eve boxes every year (although a lot of the bits put in are reused from previous years - except the Christmas themed pyjamas, those are definitely new as she grows like a weed 🤣)

Yet you by your own admission live in a massive house, whereas we live in a tiny house, and the impact of boo basket contents has been unnoticeable. I think you're massively overestimating what is in them...a lot of it is consumables.

I will OP ! Going for fluffy socks, sweets, some fake UGGS, and candle x

Tat, tacky, nonsense, landfill....on and on with the smug condemnation, even when people repeatedly say the items they buy are reused. Those posts are completely ignored, so the superior crowd can just go on and on.

They could make a reboot of Keeping Up Appeareances just from MN posters - so many pompous Mrs Buckets.

As for the cost of living - did it ever occur to people that perhaps people invest in making their homes more 'fun', hygge, whatever because they're going out less or doing fewer activities with their kids during half term? Halloween themed crafts or a hot chocolate in a 'special' mug with a film on is much cheaper than a day out!

Yes, maybe I am. I also walk past a TK Maxx on the way to work and it’s window is full of big old Halloween ornaments, whole dinner services and Frankenstein monster cushions and I was definitely wondering where people put them.

Im not ‘admitting’ I live in a massive house, I’m just saying it. My linen/boiler cupboard is just the same size as any house though.

I just don’t see the harm. I made one for my stepdaughter (11) - a ghost squishy, a packet of Halloween themed sweets, a pair of cosy socks with a Halloween theme and a Tonie of Roald Dahl The Witches. Total spend was £8 (Tonie was from Vinted, squishy from a charity sale at my school for £1). So I recycled by buying second hand and made a girl who is at the end of the phase of life where we can enjoy the “magic” really happy.

No. It just builds and builds the expectation of gifts and constant big events, and then nothing is exciting as they’re used to getting hampers full of presents every couple of months.

"By your own admission" doesn't mean that you are "admitting" to something bad, it means that you have stated something to be true. You offered up the information that you live in a massive house.

We don't even have a linen cupboard 😂 we store it under the bed. Fortunately DD has kept the fleece blanket from last year's boo basket on her bed, so we didn't have the challenge of folding up a fleece and putting it under our bed. Shower gel went in the bathroom, body spray on her dressing table, edibles in the kitchen cupboard. We seem to have managed this in a tiny house. I don't think in reality many people buy full Halloween dinner services from tk maxx

But everyone claims the stuff is re-used same for dec 1st boxes etc. No one ever admits to buying all the tat that appears in the tat shops!

😂😂

It’s just where the boiler is in reality.

I haven’t ever come across anyone saying ‘by your own admission’ when they are merely meaning ‘you said’. It’s an unusual turn of phrase. ‘You admitted you wanted a cup of tea’ is not something I would say but each to their own.

I don’t think it is bad that I live in a massive house.

Maybe you aren’t the right person to answer my query if you aren’t buying those things.

I wouldn't say "you admitted you wanted a cup of tea" either, because "you admitted" and "by your own admission" carry different meanings. I didn't say you admitted anything.

I also did not say that living in a massive house is a bad thing. "By your own admission" doesn't necessarily mean that you've admitted to something bad; in this context it meant "according to what you've told us". I don't think it's an unusual turn of phrase whatsoever. The fact that you've muddied it up with "you admitted" in your cup of tea example says a lot.

Well hardly anyone is buying them, hence why a lot of high street shops are failing? The purpose of the window displays is to get people in the door. Have you not seen the shop staff after Halloween and Christmas putting all the "tat" back in the stock room to be brought out again the next year?

For many, many years children enjoyed halloween by blackening their faces and going round houses for a small piece of fruit. Shall we go back to that? I’m sure when guising became more widespread, moving outwith Scotland where it was mainly done, there were parents in England who whined about it. Even living in Scotland as a child 50 years ago my mum was vehemently against us guising, bleated about that “American rubbish” even though the tradition was rooted in Scotland.

Things change, life moves on, fads come and go, some stick and become traditions, some are a flash in the pan. Nobody forces anyone to do it. I don’t need to watch a you-tube video (ironic given everyone whining it’s about social media) to form an opinion on it. My daughter is 17 so beyond any of this stuff, but she has never been able to go guising, and she really missed out on the fun. If these had been a thing at the time, we might have done something like it. Not all children are built the same.

Too many people like to whine about what others choose to do when largely, it has no impact on other people’s lives. OP asked a simple question about what to put in one, and got the usual vitriol (on social media) about people doing things for social media/consumerism/americanism blah blah blah. It’s all so tedious and predictable.

If you say so, I don’t agree but that’s fine as far as I’m concerned.

I genuinely do reuse the same wicker basket each time and have done for 5 years now. I have been using the same large hamper on Christmas Eve for 25 years. Three new pairs of pyjamas over winter for a growing teen is hardly excessive.

Boo basket contents are consumable items like shower foam, face mask, eye patches, Lanaige lip mask, ordinary skincare, pyjamas (plain stripy ones), fluffy socks and a colouring book plus popcorn and sweets for a movie night.

December 1st I refill it as an alternative to a beauty advent calendar with individual items I know DD will use as opposed to wasting items from a calendar. Plus a pair or festive pyjamas she will wear until she outgrows and yet another colouring book as she loves them plus a chocolate coin for each day. I wrap each item and use stickers to number them by day - on a few days there are envelopes with details of days out on them such as a theatre trip, cinema, feeding reindeer’s etc).

The Christmas Eve hamper has the same plate for Father Christmas’ mince pie and his cup for a drink we got when DS was born 25 years ago, a copy of a book purchased in 2008 and a quality street tin I refill from several bags now because they used to have so many more in them (plus taste better 🙄) plus a pair of non Christmas themed pyjamas for anyone staying in my home on Christmas Eve - this year everyone has traditional tartan and will wear them again on a family weekend away in February.

Easter tends to be short pyjamas for spring/summer, more make up and skincare plus some Easter sweets.

These are all things I would buy anyway and we don’t post pictures of them on social media etc.

No no no

@ImmortalNowBabyDollI don’t really go to tat shops, not my thing. I googled boo box & Micheal Barrymore (!) shopping for his came up.

Presumably the junk they get trick or treating is predominantly sweets? So a box containing a craft set, colouring, stickers etc is completely different.

@Shinyhappyapplemy dc have art & craft supplies, there is no need for me to buy specific Halloween ones.

That’s a good point. And I think it’s a known social phenomenon that when times are hard, if people do have spare cash they will spend it on things to cheer themselves up as the bigger items are just too far out of reach.