A Halloween Scare at the Door

Yesterday was Halloween, and we had something extra waiting for the kids. We set up an automation that gave them a Halloween scare as they came to the door to get their candy.

The kids loved it.

That's really the whole story of the night. They came for candy, they got a scare along with it, and they loved it. But the part I keep thinking about is how little it took to make it happen.

The prep is what changed

A configuration like this is the kind of thing that would take lots of prep. When you hear the idea, you assume there's a lot of work behind it, and there would have been.

Now it's easy. Very easy, in fact. You can set it up in so little time.

That's what struck me. The idea itself is simple: a kid walks up to the door expecting candy and gets a scare first. People have always understood why that's fun. What has changed is the distance between having the idea and actually having it running. On one side, you have lots of prep. On the other, you have so little time that it hardly counts as a project.

When something gets that easy, you just do it. That's what happened here. We didn't have to treat it as a big production. We set it up, the kids came to the door, and it worked the way we wanted it to.

An easy way to take part

What I liked most is that it gave us an easy way to participate in the Halloween tradition.

Every family has its own traditions. Sam grew up travelling with her family, and a Christmas trip to Hawaii was theirs. Halloween is a different kind of tradition because it comes right to your front door. The kids show up, you hand out candy, and you're part of it.

We still did all of that. The candy was still the reason they came to the door. The automation just added a scare on top, and it took very little effort to add.

That's what I'm taking away from this Halloween. Something that would have taken lots of prep can now be done in so little time, and the kids at the door loved it.