The Halloween Neighborhood Bazaar is similar to a Fall Festival. We host this every year the week before Halloween, and we have an amazing turnout. We have 264 apartments and usually over 300 people and 50 pets attend the event each year.

We encourage everyone to attend in costume, including the residents' pets. At the beginning of the evening, we host a costume parade for all the residents and pets that arrive in costume. At the end of the parade, we hand out goodie bags filled with candy and toys for all the children and goodie bags stocked with treats and squeaky toys for all the pets.

The main part of the bazaar is hosted by the residents, which is great, because it saves us lots of time and money. Residents compete for a large prize (usually a rent concession or gift card), and they can set up a booth, game, or even sales table (like Tupperware or Pampered Chef). The best decorated booth and the one with the most creative idea wins. We've had residents set up a haunted house, a craft table to create your own ghosts, a palm reader, a cupcake decorating game, and more.

Throughout the evening, we have games set up around the event that residents can play, including a football toss, ladder ball, and corn hole. The property staff built most of these games through cheap materials from Lowe's and Michaels, and we are able to use them over and over. We also have contests for small prizes throughout the evening like a pumpkin walk (similar to a cake walk), a game to guess how many candy corns are in the jar, and a pumpking carving contest. For the pumpkin carving contests, residents must carve their pumpkin and submit it one hour before the event starts. We also raffle off the reservation for the Super Bowl in our Movie Theatre. Raffle tickets are $1, and all proceeds are donated to Toys for Tots each holiday season.

For food, we usually offer something that can be done inexpensively while still feeding a lot of people, such as hamburgers and hotdogs, pizza, or even a pig-pickin'.

For decoration, we have some inexpensive ghosts, cobwebs, and other Halloween-themed objects to set out, as well as lots of black and orange balloons. We also light up the event with lots of orange and purple string lights.

When the sky darkens, we conclude the night with a "drive-in" theatre outside, playing a family-friendly movie.

The event is simply amazing, and the best part is the resident participation makes this party extremely easy and cost-effective to host.