Thanks to Christy from Pepin for this guest post!
Every fall families would come into the Pepin Public Library
and socialize with each other and the conversation would turn to “What are your
kids going to be for Halloween?” They
would then talk about costumes that they had and would be willing to give to
each other. Each family always had that
one costume that no longer fit any of their children and their friend’s
children didn’t want.
This got me thinking that maybe the library could be a place
where unwanted costumes could come and find new homes. Thus was the beginning of the Halloween
Costume Exchange. Flyers were made and
distributed and tickets were printed.
Families were told that they could drop off any costume for any age or
size. These costumes would then belong
to the library to use for the exchange and if any costumes were not used they
would be donated to a local charity at the end of October.
Families had several options to choose from when dropping
off a costume. They could do a straight
up one for one exchange – drop off one; take one home. They could drop off a costume and take a
ticket to be traded for a costume anytime in October. This worked for families who didn’t see
anything when they came in, especially if they were some of the first to drop
off a costume. Near the end of the
program families were able to make a monetary donation to the Friends Group and
then just take a costume home without having to provide a costume. All of these options were used. In addition some families just made a
donation of a costume without taking one. 2013 was the first time we attempted
this and we had 6 families do some type of exchange.
We started to accept costumes the third week of September to
have some on hand for the beginning of October.
The first two weeks of October preference was given to families who had
costumes to do an exchange or redeem tickets.
The last week before Halloween anyone could get a costume by any method. We accepted costumes throughout October.The few left over costumes were then given to the local
community assistance organization or kept at the library to be available for
the children to play with.
Tickets were created in Publisher using a business card
template. We had some blank business
card sheets that we printed on and then tore apart. We wanted something more substantial than
regular typing paper. Printing on card
stock and cutting apart would achieve the same result. We also dated them so we could do this again
in the future without worrying about another year’s unredeemed tickets
emerging.
Labels: costumes