{"id":25803,"date":"2015-09-17T05:27:51","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T10:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=25803"},"modified":"2015-09-14T09:34:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T14:34:14","slug":"its-secret-pumpkin-time-again-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=25803","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Secret Pumpkin Time Again!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/secretpumpkin.gif\" alt=\"Secret Pumpkin Logo\" title=\"Secret Pumpkin Logo\" width=\"381\" height=\"75\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12317\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/secretpumpkin.gif 381w, http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/secretpumpkin-150x29.gif 150w, http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/secretpumpkin-300x59.gif 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Secret Pumpkin gift exchange was conceived as a way to soothe those spooky souls pining for October by sending them a little Halloween in April.  It&#8217;s similar to a Secret Santa exchange but the gifts are supposed to be spooky in nature; you can read my previous description and details <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=12312\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And now it&#8217;s time to open up registration for next April&#8217;s exchange!  If you&#8217;d like to participate, go to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.secretpumpkin.com\/\">Secret Pumpkin site<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>1) If you did not participate last year, click the &#8220;Join&#8221; link and fill out the form.<\/p>\n<p>2) If you <em>DID<\/em> participate last year, log in, click the &#8220;Update Profile&#8221; link and change the &#8220;Activate My Membership&#8221; option to Yes.<\/p>\n<p>(Just in case it isn&#8217;t clear&#8211;folks have been confused in the past&#8211;I&#8217;m the person who manages the site, so you aren&#8217;t blindly submitting your mailing address to some anonymous stranger.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d previously suggested that participants should join one of the two Halloween listservs which originally spawned the exchange, but they&#8217;ve withered away so much that they may actually be defunct; instead I send occasional reminders directly to the participants.<\/p>\n<p>You can sign up even if you aren&#8217;t in the U.S., and if you encourage friends from the same country to participate you don&#8217;t have to worry about exorbitant shipping. My script matches people in the same country preferentially, and at the end of the signup period I&#8217;ll let you know if you&#8217;re the only one in your country so you can decide whether or not to participate.<\/p>\n<p>The deadline for signups is October 15.  All that I ask is please, <em>PLEASE<\/em> don\u2019t sign up for the exchange unless you\u2019re serious about following through.  We occasionally have participants flake out, and their Pumpkins are always sorely disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>C&#8217;mon and join!  It&#8217;s lots of fun, and getting something unexpectedly Halloweeny in April is a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Secret Pumpkin gift exchange was conceived as a way to soothe those spooky souls pining for October by sending them a little Halloween in April. It&#8217;s similar to a Secret Santa exchange but the gifts are supposed to be spooky in nature; you can read my previous description and details here. And now it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25806,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25803\/revisions\/25806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}