Celebrating Halloween can be so much fun, especially if you plan ahead. While the traditional night of trick-or-treating still remains popular, many families are opting to celebrate at home. Here are five ideas to get you started.
1. Bake Halloween Treats
What would Halloween be without a few orange and black cupcakes? Get out the recipe book or purchase a box of cake mix to whip up a batch of delicious treats for the whole family. Decorating your cupcakes is going to be a lot of fun too, especially if you plan ahead and buy a lot of sugar sprinkles and decorative items. Alternatively, you can bake sugar cookies for sweet treats. If you are really energetic, why not make both?
2. Decorate Inside and Out
Part of the fun of any holiday is preparing for it to arrive. Set aside a night or even an entire weekend to decorate your home on the inside as well as on the outside. Your choices are endless and include window, doorway, and lawn decorations as well as smaller items for the inside of your home. If money is an issue, consider using items you have around the home to create your own decorations. All you need is a little ingenuity along with some paper, milk jugs, markers, string, and ribbons.
3. Make a Scarecrow for Each Family Member
For a full afternoon of fun, gather enough supplies to make a scarecrow for every member of your family. In addition to old clothes and shoes, you will need newspapers or rags for stuffing, string to tie off sleeves and pant legs, and pumpkins for the heads. You can always use a basketball in place of a pumpkin for the head.
4. Read Spooky Stories
You can find lots of books filled with spooky stories at your local bookstore or library. Pick up a few and spend a candlelit night on the back porch reading a few of the spookiest stories. You might even want to take turns reading, especially if everyone has a different style of telling scary tales.
5. Play Charades
A night of charades is just what you need to have a lot of Halloween fun. Make up the cards ahead of time with a list of spooky movies, characters, treats, games, and traditions. If at all possible, ask someone who isn’t going to play charades with you to create the cards for you so that you can enjoy playing along with the rest of the group.
Whether you plan to go out for a night of gathering candy or not, you can also enjoy the Halloween season with a few carefully planned events of your own. Everyone in the family can offer ideas on what sounds like the most fun and help set the activities up.