Want to see what 210 bags of Halloween candy looks like?
As long as I work at MCC Red Mountain, I will be stuck planning the Halloween Extravaganza. This is going to be the 6th event we've held on our campus, and it gets bigger every year. This year, we wanted to make sure that we didn't have to rely on student donations for the candy, and got approval from college administration to spend college funds to purchase candy and whatever else was needed for the event. We have always received plenty of donations from students, but don't want to continue to beg faculty to offer extra credit. This year, we decided to say that we're "accepting candy donations," and not specifically ask instructors to offer extra credit (we'd heard that plenty of faculty had issues with that). What we came to find out though, is that this event has become part of the culture of our campus, and faculty have built it into their syllabus for the fall semester. They offer extra credit and ask for the donations whether we ask them to or not.
Not knowing how much we'd end up getting, I hit up Fry's when they were having a good sale on candy one night on my way home from trapeze. The sale was $2 per bag if you bought at least 4 bags of candy. I filled up 2 carts, and after getting plenty of odd looks from other shoppers, pulled my load up to the register. The poor kid who was helping to load up all of this candy just kept saying over and over "this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy." The original price on all of this candy was $900, but after the sale, was only $450. That's some serious couponing! Also, this is the longest receipt ever.
In hindsight (because since I'm behind in my blogging and know how Halloween ended up), I didn't need to buy all of this candy. We had plenty left over after the event and we could have made it on student donations alone. For next year, I will get approval to buy the candy if needed, but wait until just before the event to actually buy any. It's always better to have too much than not enough though, so it's all good. When I brought the candy home that night, the kids went a little crazy. They asked if they could dump it out and roll around in it! I kept it at my house until the day of the event, so we had it hidden under blankets. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes....
