Over the last couple of days I have been hearing some great ideas for leftover Halloween candy. Some houses have the “Great Pumpkin” or “Halloween Witch” come and exchange a present for the candy. Some dentists buy back the candy from the kids on a per pound basis. I’ve even heard that there are ways to send the candy overseas to the troops. In our house, we do the same thing every year–Gingerbread Houses.
Although it’s a little early on November 1 to be thinking about Gingerbread Houses, it helps if the candy gets a little bit stale. On Halloween night I pull out all of the taffy, Smarties, Skittles, etc. and put them in a special bag in the closet. Basically anything that could be used on a Gingerbread house gets pulled out first. In about three weeks, we will pull it back out to start making our houses. It saves money in making the houses but also gives me a good reason to limit the amount of candy that the kids eat.
This year it turns out that we got a lot more chocolate than usual, so we will be freezing about half of it to pull out later as treats. Most of the chocolate bars freeze just fine and they are great to have in a pinch when there are lots of kids over and I need a treat fast.
What do you do with your leftover Halloween candy?
LOVE this idea!! I am going to go through and pull out any candy we can use on the houses! I never thought of freezing the chocolate bars- that’s a great idea as well!! Luckily our kids like the trick or treating part better than eating the candy. After about the 2nd day, they forgot about the candy. Sadly, I have not been so lucky!