How to make the most of Spooky Season…
Before we get into the depths of Christmas everything, it’s fun to embrace the Autumnal months and fully immerse ourselves in the spooky season. Halloween is often seen as an American holiday and many choose not to get involved with celebrations over here in the UK, but I just think it’s a great excuse to decorate the house, buy all the yummy snacks, throw a party, and let the children (and grown ups!) have some fun.
It’s a personal parenting choice, but I don’t let my children go trick or treating, so we often celebrate Halloween in lots of other exciting ways. There are so many fun things you can do, as a family or with friends, and here are some of my favourite activities you can do to make the most of Spooky season.
Decorating the house
Decorating the house for spooky season is one of the most fun ways to celebrate, I only had the house decorated for a week this time, but the children loved it so much! You can decorate the inside, the outside, or even both. I decorated just the inside of our house this year, as the outside is a mess currently with us renovating the hallway, but the children loved driving past houses on our estate that had put lots of fun decorations outside.
Halloween decorations don’t need to be lavish, I’ve picked up lots of bits over the last few years and each year I add a handful of new things and it gradually builds up to a nice little collection. However, the decorations that make the most impact are often the cheapest, like cotton wool cobwebs, and little bat stickers. You can make these yourself or pick up big packets of them on Amazon for really affordable prices. I like that you get plenty inside as there’s enough inside to last me 3+ years, making next years decs cost me nothing if I wish!
It’s a fun activity to do with your children to craft lots of decorations yourselves, paper bats are easy to make and hang with a bit of ribbon or string, and garlands are quite simple to make too.
Decorating Pumpkins
Decorating pumpkins is always a fairly cheap and fun activity to do, it feels so autumnal and the best part is, when you’re finished, they add to your spooky decorations! My personal favourite way to decorate pumpkins is to paint on them, as it’s less messy and they tend to last longer before they start to go off. This year I invested in some acrylic paint markers which worked an absolute treat, and my two boys loved drawing and colouring in their pumpkins.
We also carved some pumpkins just under a week before Halloween which was very messy but loads of fun. All four children did one each, with our youngest mostly getting his drawn and carved for him, but he loved it and just wanted to join in with the bigger kids. They all loved seeing them lit up with candles afterwards and they looked fab!
SPOOKY MOVIE NIGHTS
Spooky movie nights are always a great excuse to have some family time with tasty snacks and I mean, who doesn’t want an excuse to buy lots of snacks?! This year I bought lots of goodies at Aldi who always do a fab range of themed snacks for every season, as well as some yummy bits from M&S. We had a sweet & salty popcorn mix with frog gummies and peanut butter chocolate pumpkins, and then we had a selection of ghost tortilla chips, chocolate eyeballs, fizzy gummy spiders and a few others. I also pushed the boat out and got in some bright red and green fizzy pop to add to the halloween vibes, the kids loved it.
COSY THEMED BATHS
I must admit, I’ll use any excuse to buy myself some bath goodies for a themed bubble bath, and spooky season is no exception. Some baby squash, scary biscuits, pumpkin candles, and a ghost or two, and I had the perfect spooky themed bath. I got myself the pumpkin bubble bar from Lush which was insanely dreamy, highly recommend! I did also have the skeleton bath bomb, but my two year old stole it, and that one was pretty good too.
COOKING WITH PUMPKINS
Pumpkins can be used for so many different things, and it’s a shame when lots of them just get wasted. I made a delicious veggie pumpkin soup with some leftover gammon stock and it went beautifully with some crusty buttered bread. A cream based pumpkin soup is insanely yummy too.
The list of things you can make with your pumpkins is endless, from pumpkin pasta, pumpkin stews, and pumpkin risottos, to pumpkin bread, pumpkin cakes, pumpkin pies, and pumpkin syrups. I could go on all day, but there really is thousands of delicious recipes out there to try. I also froze some chopped up pumpkin to use for another day, so you don’t have to use it all at once.
Do you enjoy Spooky Season? How do you celebrate?
