Clotheslines and pelting popcorn balls: creative ways to hand out candy safely

While Saskatchewan is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Halloween is still going ahead, but there will be some changes to the traditional celebrations.

The provincial government released a set of guidelines for the holiday in September, including avoiding direct contact with trick-or-treaters, handing out candy with a set of tongs, wiping down surfaces like the doorbell and keeping up physical distance between people not from the same household.

Some people are working to think of creative ways to hand out candy and stay safe.

Darlene King, the owner of Sweetie Pie’s Bakery and Cafe in Regina, said there has been one particularly popular treat leading up to Halloween: popcorn balls.

“This is kind of cute… People are ordering the popcorn balls because they are the closest to a softball and they can just throw them from the step into the kids’ bags,” she said with a chuckle.

On a normal year, she would sell about 60 popcorn balls leading up to Halloween. She has had around 400 orders this weekend.

“We have pulled the staff off of all the other orders. Once they’re done, it’s just popcorn balls all day long. We have spent probably 16 total man-hours just (Thursday) on popcorn balls, and it will be the same today,” she said in an interview Friday.

She guesses that the bakery will bring in $1500 just in popcorn ball sales over three days.

Shawna Alderton, a Regina woman, toyed with the idea of handing out candy in a similar way, but eventually dismissed it.

“I wanted to be like “Dad, can we just pelt the candy at the children through the door?’ He didn’t go for it for some reason,” she said with a giggle.

“I thought about putting a clothesline up and clipping bags of chips onto the clothesline, but I didn’t quite get that done.”

Instead, she’ll just stick with the province’s guidelines of wearing a mask and using a pair of tongs.

Kat Donnelly, who spends hours making and putting up Halloween decorations at her Habkirk Dr. home, won’t be doing anything special when it comes to handing out candy, but she will be using COVID guidelines as a way to add to her display.

“We’re going to put a social distancing square out, and then we’re gonna put monster feet out for distancing if we have a line … I will be wearing a mask and gloves, and maybe handing out candy with tongs. I just want the kids to enjoy something this year because of COVID and how it has affected so much,” she explained.