TRunk-or-Treat ’26: The Booook Shop

I know I said my next post would be a fall craft, but we had trunk-or-treat at our church Sunday night, and it was so much fun I want to go ahead and tell you about that. I don’t like the dark side of Halloween, but I do love a good trunk-or-treat theme and oh how I used to love putting together costumes for my kids.

I wasn’t even thinking we’d have time to participate in trunk-or-treat this year, but several nights prior to the event our family was eating out and my daughter asked if we were doing a trunk this year because if so, she had a great idea for a theme– a book shop! I LOVED her idea! Those who know her best know her love for books, and those who know me best, know all I need is a theme to work with and I’m all in! We immediately began cranking out bookish ideas over dinner and somehow found ourselves in Hobby Lobby before heading home that night.

I had seen these crates at Hobby Lobby a while back and thought they’d be handy for a future event I had in mind but too far down the road to go ahead and purchase them. We walked into the store that night and, lo and behold, they were 40% off because they were classified as fall decor, woohoo! Turned on their sides they made the perfect mini bookshelves. Knowing that the bulk of our decorations would come from our home (books, tablecloth, mugs, lamps, etc), we splurged on the green wooden panel, the Pride and Prejudice print, and the fall garland, all of which were also 40% off!

I ordered the book page bunting from Amazon and later that week when I was back in H.L. I saw the fall tree on sale. In the store it really looked a little cheap and not something I would usually want to buy or store, but I had a feeling that at night it would look magical all lit and give the impression of a fall tree planted along the “sidewalk” of our pretend book shop. I had a cute basket/pot at home to put it in but forgot it as we were loading the car that afternoon, so I wrapped the base with a table runner I had in the car. When we returned home that night, there sat the pot on the driveway, ha!

When my kids were little, of course our themes were more childlike, but since I don’t have little ones anymore, it was nice to let our trunk “grow up” and use my daughter’s idea. The kids and adults alike still seemed to enjoy it. My son suggested we call our car the “Boooook Shop” which I thought was really cute.

The responses from our visitors were really fun. I can’t tell you how many times we heard the word “cozy”. One of our friends walked up, sighed, and said, “Ahh, I’m home!” Many of the teens and adults looked through our book selections which struck up conversation about genres, favorite authors, and what we’d each been reading lately. One of my friends said, “Alinda, I recognize some of these from your mantel.” Yep, my girl and I pulled our favorite and prettiest books from all over our house–bookshelves, mantel, tearoom, desk, coffee table. It was really hard to narrow them down!

For our treats, we handed out book worms (gummy worms) and bookmarks!

My mom let us borrow her little chalkboard that she uses for parties, and my girl found a bookish quote to write on it. And that finished off our display! Well, sort of……

I have learned over the years to be entirely flexible when planning for any kind of event and just know when to make the call to ditch an idea and move on quickly. I call it “pivot and proceed!” We had planned to pass out pumpkin spice lattes to the teens and parents. We actually spent most of Sunday afternoon preparing it, tweaking the recipe until it tasted just right and had gallons and gallons of PSL. We had 4 air pots filled plus 6 quart-size jars of hot PSL in a cooler. I had ordered fall cups from Amazon in a cute fall plaid. We had our little coffee station prepared next to our car and we were set.

Thankfully, my daughter asked to have some right before the trunk-or-treaters were released and I’m so glad she did because when it came out of the air pots something was very off! It took us a minute to figure out what was going on and then realized that because we’d used real pureed pumpkin in the recipe, it settled on the bottom and then clumped while going through the pumps and what came out was, let’s say, unappealing. We quickly loaded all the pots and cups into the front of car to get rid of the evidence and proceeded without the coffee. It would have been a nice touch, but it certainly wasn’t necessary or missed. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll just do a whole coffee bar theme!

Before I go, here are some photos from last year. The trunk-or-treat was held inside our church’s gym and some of the classrooms. I had not planned on participating but that weekend they put out a call for more booths. So, I literally just took everything off my porch, bought nothing, and made a welcoming “front porch” theme as if they were knocking on our front door for trick-or-treat.

The youth group did “Men in Black” and transformed the entire teen room to fit their theme.

We have a great group of teens!

In addition to the trick-or-treating for the kids, each year they also have a costume contest and chili contest. I make a very basic chili recipe, so I don’t enter that contest, but wow, there is such a neat variety of unique chili recipes presented!

I hope you’re soaking up all the fun fall events this year! Oh, and I almost forgot. Our “Booook Shop” was one of the winners for this year’s Trunk-or-Treat! The other themes that won were “The Sandlot”, “Jaws”, and the “Tattoo Parlor” (temporary kid tattoos). We have some creative people at our church!