Halloween is one of my favorite holidays on the calendar. The whole neighborhood is out, the porch lights are on, and for a couple of hours the front door is the center of the world. It deserves a little more thought than a plastic pumpkin and a bag of candy, and it does not take much to make your porch the one everyone remembers. Here is how to get ready, starting with the most important piece of all, the Halloween candy bowl.
Choose a candy bowl worth the walk up the steps
A good candy bowl should be generous enough that the last trick-or-treater of the night does not find it empty, and handsome enough that you are happy to keep using it long after the candy is gone. Look for something wide and sturdy that small hands can reach into easily.
Our large splatterware bowl in cream and brown is 17 inches across and made in the workshops of Grottaglie, the ceramics capital of Italy. This is my go-to bowl for just about everything. Sometimes I fill it with fruit. Other times, it acts as a bread bowl for bagels, sliced bread and baguette. It also comes in brown on rose which is my favorite color.
Our large mochaware bowl in the earthworm and cat's eye pattern could not be better named for the night. Mochaware's patterns really are called earthworm, seaweed and cat's eye, and ours is thrown by one of the few potters in the country keeping the tradition alive. Or try the large green splatter Tamegroute fruit bowl, made by hand in a small village at the edge of the Sahara, where the same few families have made this pottery for centuries. Its deep green and ochre glaze looks wonderful heaped with orange and black wrappers.
Light the way to the door
Trick-or-treaters go where the lights are on, so this is the one night of the year to light your porch like you mean it. A hand-blown tortoiseshell hurricane lantern with a pillar candle inside casts a warm, amber glow on the steps. On a busy porch full of flowing capes and costumes, a flameless pillar inside the hurricane gives you the same look without the worry.
Inside, place our bittersweet oak stick candles in Starry Night and Dark Chocolate in candlesticks and position them on a table in the front window, where they can be seen from the street. Each one is hand-dipped in North Carolina around a real oak branch twined with a waxen bittersweet vine, so they look like something gathered from the woods on a wintry day. A pair of maple stick candles in Tangerine brings just the right pumpkin color, and you can light them all with marbled fireplace matches by Susan Schneider of Shandell's, who marbles paper by hand in her studio in the Berkshires.
Give the porch a little harvest color
I totally get the fun of an inflatable, but I've never quite been able to go that far into kitsch. To me, an array of beautiful pumpkins and gourds in all sizes and shapes looks fabulous placed on the steps Mix in our hand enameled ceramic oranges, hand cast in Spain, with real gourds and mini pumpkins in a big bowl on the dining room table to give you a colorful centerpiece with little effort. Or place a low pot of yellow or gold mums in one of Giglio Ceramics' ceramic ginkgo planters, handmade in Italy for an equally-simple center arrangement.
Have something warm waiting inside
Once the last princess and pirate have headed home, nothing is better than a pot of chili on the stove. Halloween night is a great occasion for decorating and cooking and entertaining without so much fuss. My friend Landon Cobbs' family recipe for beer, chocolate and peanut chili with cornpone is out of this world. I served it not long ago on a lazy Sunday when friends were over watching a football game, and it would make the best post-trick or treat meal, cozy and rich. Serve it in a splatterware bowl and pour hot cider into marbleware mugs, glazed by hand in the Ozark Mountains in colors that nod to the turning leaves.
A treat for the grown-ups
The parents walking the neighborhood deserve a treat too. Keep a pair of hand-blown tortoiseshell rocks glasses, made in Vermont, on a tray by the door for a bourbon on the porch steps, and use our cocktail mixing glass, also hand blown in Vermont, to stir up a quick batch of something festive.
And if you are planning a grown-up Halloween party, the book with the most fitting title on our shelves is A Screaming Blast: Exceptional Entertaining, in which style maven, Rebecca Gardener, the founder of Houses & Parties, invites you to crash twenty of her parties, every one of them full of style, wit and whimsy. Check out her site for completely zany costumes and novelties for the night. 
Find it all in one place
Browse The Autumn Table for serving bowls, candles and harvest pieces that will see you from Halloween straight through Thanksgiving. If you are in Nashville, stop by our Nashville Shop on White Bridge Road. We are open until 5 on Halloween, which falls on a Saturday this year, so there is still time to pick up a candy bowl before the doorbell starts ringing.
