At the end of the week, thousands of kids across the country will put on their costumes and go door-to-door with family and friends to enjoy the fun of Trick or Treating.
Trick or Treat has always been a family favorite for us and of course, the kids cannot wait for Friday to get here. To keep them entertained until then, I’ve put together a few fun things for them to do this week in preparation for the big day.
First, we are going to decorate pumpkins! We opted out of carving pumpkins this year because they are usually filled with mold by Halloween, get eaten by an animal or worse, someone smashes them all over the street. So, instead of carving, we are planning on decorating them using some of these great No-Carve ideas.
On top of pumpkin decorating, we will also be doing some fun crafts to decorate the main windown and door of our home. These are some of our favorite crafts on the agenda.
In addition to decorating and crafting, we will also be watching some of our favorite Halloween movies on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Some of our favorite family friendly flicks are:
Curious George – A Halloween Boofest
The Nightmare Before Christmas
It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
Simpson’s Tree House of Terror episodes
Much, MUCH MORE!
What are plans for this week, other than Trick or Treating?
Looking for some last minute ideas to decorate your house for Halloween? Check out these quick and easy projects!
The Front Door Mummy:
Decorate your house in full Halloween fashion with this simply adorable “Mummy Door” Your young guests or trick or treaters might think twice before coming in your home when they see the front door watching them. Making this decoration is rather simple.
What You Need:
-White Paper Streamers
-Black Construction paper
-Scissors
-Tape
How to Do It:
Place the streamers across the door, with the edges slightly over lapping. Leave gaps between paper streamers occasionally to give it an authentic mummy look. Tape the streamers in place. After your door has been covered with your streamers, cut 2 black ovals from the construction paper to make eyes and tape into place. For extra effect, leave several streamer ends un-taped so that it will flutter in the breeze.
Halloween Wreath
During the festive Halloween activities, you need a way to show people that you are really in the spirit of things. A wreath is a great way to display different ideas and with this quick and fun project you can let everyone know that you’re cooking up something good.
What You Need:
Stick or Styrofoam wreath ( Your choice)
Scissors
Hot Glue gun.
Assortment of Felt
Assorted sizes googily eyes.
How to do it.
Basically it is up to you to decide what you will put on your wreath. You can choose a pumpkin using orange and black felt, a cauldron using black felt and what ever color brew you desire, a broom, a with hat, fall leaves, or any thing else that makes you think of the fall holiday. After you have drawn out your felt items, cut them out. Some people like to glue the felt shapes onto a thin piece of cardboard to keep it stiff. Hot glue your pieces around the wreath. Make sure that you slightly overlap the edges of the piece.
Halloween Swaying Banner
Celebrate your Halloween style with a cute banner that you can hang in your doorway, or if you desire a longer string you can hang it between your poles on your porch.
What You Need
Craftways Halloween Cuties Ornaments
Small metal ring
Fishing Line it thread. How to do it.
Follow the directions on the package. When your cuties are complete simply push a small metal ring through the top of the piece and run thread through the loops.
Safe Candles
Safe candles are cute and super easy to make. The result is a Halloween treat that will create a gentle illumination.
What You Need:
Small Mason Jars
An Assortment of different colored tissue paper
Black construction paper
Glow sticks.
How To Do It.
Apply a light layer of adhesive to your mason jar. Carefully and evenly wrap a layer of tissue paper around the jar, avoiding the screw rings. Gently wrap the excess around the bottom of the jar and glue in place. Cut face pieces from the construction paper and glue onto the tissue paper. Bend and shake a glow stick and place it inside the Mason jar, secure lid and place your safe candles by the door. Make sure they are placed out of traffic.
Candy Table Cloth
On the night the little ghouls and goblins come out to get their goodies, you need a creative and spooktacular candy tablecloth. The Halloween star table topper is the way to go. All that you need is included in this kit. By the time you’re done with this project you will have 4 Mexican sugar skulls ghoulishly grinning at you, just daring you to reach for your desired treat.
It’s crazy to think that it is October already and that Halloween is right around the corner. My kids have been planning out what they want to be this year over the last month or so and I think they have made some pretty great choices. Ellie decided she would go as her current heroine (other than me), Wonder Woman; Joey went back and forth on between super heroes and landed on Batman; and Alex….well he decided to FINALLY do something that isn’t a Power Ranger or ninja related.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you the cutest Dr. Egon Spengler!
My little Alex has been begging to be a Ghostbuster for Halloween for months so I was on the hunt to find him a costume that would last, because lets face it, I am done making costumes!
Thanks to the folks at TVStoreOnline.com we were able to find him the perfect Ghostbusters costume. What I really like about this costume is not only is it of good quality, with the weather we are having here in Wisconsin, it offers enough room for him to wear his cold weather gear underneath the costume to keep him nice and warm while he is out Trick-or-Treating.
When we were looking through the site, I was impressed with the great selection of costumes that TV Store Online has to offer as well as other items like pop culture themed hoodies, baby shirts and rompers, leggings, hats, backpacks and so much more! If you love pop culture themed items (including shirts Sheldon Cooper has worn!!), this is your new one-stop-shop!
If you are in need of a costume for Halloween or a themed costume for an upcoming event, be sure to visit TVStoreOnline.com!
Now that Ellie is at the age where she enjoys crafting, coloring and really, anything she can make a mess with, I’ve been trying to dig deep into my ex-childcare teacher bag of tricks for more things for her to do. Thankfully we have the internet these days and finding ideas is a million times easier than it was back when I was working as a toddler and preschool teacher.
With Halloween right around the corner, I thought we would focus on some toddler friendly crafts that Ellie and I can do together as well as a few that allow Joey to join in the fun too!
Here are 13 Toddler Friendly Halloween Crafts from around the web that we are hoping to find the time to create between now and October 31st!
Shopping for Halloween costumes with a group of kids in tow has never been a pleasant experience for me. I’ll admit, I gave up on taking the kids costume shopping years ago and resorted to ordering whatever they wanted, online, because it just made the entire process easier for me. I have also spent gobs of money on costumes, until this year.
This year we told the kids their costumes had to be something other than their favorite cartoon characters. When you have a kid who has been a Power Ranger (a different one each time) every year for the last 6 years, it is time to make some rules.
Oriental Trading has a huge selection of costumes so you can shop for the entire family at once. The other thing that makes shopping for costumes at Oriental Trading so great is that they are affordable too!
Picking out costumes was so easy this year. Before we started looking, I told the kids we were not spending more than $25 a costume and not only did we keep it under the limit, they each found a costume they loved and had to have.
Deluxe White Ninja Boys Halloween Costume with ninja sword (sword sold separately)
Girl’s Witch Costume
Red Crayola Crayon Halloween Costume for Toddler
Honestly, I couldn’t be happier with their choices or with the costumes overall. Each costume is durable and seems very well made. I also ordered them a little bigger to make sure there is room underneath them for warm clothes since we live in Wisconsin and it cold be freezing on Halloween. I also like to make sure that they can enjoy their costumes well past Halloween and have fun dressing up.
Joey is more than in love with his costume. He really is the happiest and brightest crayon in the box!
He loves his costume so much that it is hard to get him to take it off…….
At the grocery store.
If you are still on the hunt for a costume for yourself, the whole family, the kids, or even your pet, be sure to check out the selection of Halloween Costumes at Oriental Trading.
