Thank You!

I owe a big thank you to a number of people that made Funtober possible this year. Sarah Ehman, Kris DeGraeve and Megan Applegate shared some fantastic craft tutorials and recipes on the Funtober blog. It would have been a pretty quiet blog without them. The costume store couldn’t have happened without my parents. They pitched in when I wasn’t sure that I had enough time to build it. The website also couldn’t have come together without the support of my friends, who put up with me talking about Funtober in every conversation for the past six months. It wouldn’t have stayed online without the patience of the customer service folks at my hosting company, who tolerated my lack of server administration skills whenever Funtober went down. And I wouldn’t have been inspired to build it without the efforts of a number of people that I follow online. They probably don’t even know my name but they were instrumental in getting me this far.

Most of all, I have to thank you. And everyone else that visited Funtober this Fall. A double thank you goes out to everyone that ordered a Halloween costume, entered our costume giveaway, discovered an error in a directory, submitted an event that I missed, emailed to say that they found the website valuable, took the time to share Funtober with their friends, or did something else that I have forgotten to include here. You especially rock for helping make Funtober a success.

I’ve spent much of the past two weeks thinking about the future of Funtober. There’s a lot to do here before next Fall. Probably too much, in fact. I’d like to expand from handling events in October to the rest of Fall. Everything from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, in other words. That’s probably too much for one person to handle successfully. Hopefully I’ll get some help along the way.

I’d like to help people who love Fall and Halloween connect with each other. So I have been testing a few different ways to add some social networking features to the website. It seemed like visitors enjoyed the food and crafts – so I’ll have to have more tutorials next year.

I was asked a number of times during October whether I was planning to keep the costume store open year round or whether it would only be open during the Fall. The short answer: The costume store will be open year round. I’ve added a number of costumes for Thanksgiving and Christmas over the past week. But don’t worry – the focus here at Funtober will remain on the Fall.

As I’m sure you can tell from the prior paragraphs, my personal list of ideas for improvements for Funtober is pretty long. Even though a lot went right this year, there is still a lot of room for improvement. I’d love to hear your suggestions and feedback about Funtober. They would definitely help me add to, prioritize, and focus my list. Feel free to use the comment form below if you want your comments being displayed publicly or the contact form if you would like to keep them a bit more private.