Fun Ways To Celebrate Halloween

I LOVE HALLOWEEN and all the ways to celebrate it. Yep, I said it. I love it for everything it is and everything it is not. It is a time to have fun, let loose, get wild and let your freak flag fly! Keep reading for some ways to enjoy this all inclusive holiday.

For some Halloween is the one day a year some people truly let go and be themselves.

For others it is a time where you get to tap into your creative side. Decorating, creating a costume or making a spooky related craft.

It is not a holiday with a ton of expectations and demands from your family and friends. Stress is normally low (except for making sure you can find a costume) and fun is high.

Oh Halloween….

As I sit here reflecting on this night before Halloween, I am reminiscent of the days of yore. The years of Halloween past and why I have this insane amount of love for this holiday.

I think with Halloween being one of my mom’s favorite holidays and her making it so fun and memorable for us throughout the season, my sisters and I have an even bigger fondness of it. With her being gone, we can feel closer to her when we celebrate Halloween as she would.

GROWING UP…..

My mom always stayed home and passed out the candy. She loved seeing all the kids come to the door in their costumes. Plus I am pretty sure she also was having nothing to do with being outside in the cold! And yes, she was that person that handed one piece of candy to each kid that came. How else was she going to keep track of how many kids we had coming through!

My dad took us trick or treating. I think he enjoyed spending that time with us going through the neighborhood and sharing in the holiday with us kids. In fact I am fairly certain he was still coming with us when we were teenagers. Come to think of it, I don’t recall any year that I did not spend it with my family either. We just added a few friends in.

Since every year our friends would come to our home to go get candy, it was almost like we were having a Halloween party. Then when I hit about 7th grade, we started having actual Halloween parties. And the parties only got better and better each year.

People looked forward to the party every year. We had about 1700 square feet and got about 50+ kids in the house. It was safe, there was no drinking, we played music, danced and just had fun.

My mom really started kicking up her decoration game at that point. No cobwebs were to be cleared, no spider to be killed. I remember one year we had a hole in our ceiling from a leak, and we just made that part of the decorations with a those store bought webs and other décor. The more decorations we got the less whites of the walls could be seen. People would say it was like Halloween threw up in our house. LOL. We loved it.

As a child of the 80’s, there are a few Halloween experiences I regret my kids will never truly know:

1. Trick or treating in a snowstorm. Several years we had snow, one year was particularly horrible. I believe that may have been the year we were ballerinas too. Most amount of gross weather, least amount of warm clothing!
2. Having little to no neighbors in not the best neighborhood. My dad would literally pack us up and drive us to different blocks with family or friends. Take us into the neighborhood bars or stores. Whatever he could do to stretch the time.
3. Having to create all costumes using creativity and items laying around. We didn’t grow up rich and if you bought a costume I assume it was not cheap. Plus you buy one, you gotta buy it for all of us. So many years we had to really stretch our imaginations. One year I was even the United Colors of Benetton with my host brother.
4. Otherwise you would buy the costumes that were a plastic almost garbage bag top with a plastic mask. Remember the struggle of wearing these? You would have to find just the perfect angle to be able to see and breath out of it. And it kind of scratched your face a bit.
5. Money was a real thing. We got quite a bit of not-so-shiny coins in our sacks! I thought I was rich when we got home and counted out our $3 in change!
6. So was homemade candy! Mostly I remember popcorn balls! Safety back then was slightly different. It seems people were not as much of whack jobs or maybe we just were not as paranoid of a society as now.
7. Bobbing for apples was a fun event. Even the thought of people putting their face into something someone else has now has people running away with a rash!
8. Halloween school parties meant you were able to dress up for the day. Now they schedule in a small time block of allowance. And there are so many rules!
9. Looking forward to all of the special T.V. programming on the basic 5-10 stations available at the time. Back in a time when there were just 2 seasons for television, a Halloween episode of your favorite sitcoms would be aired. I looked forward to it every year.

One of the absolute BEST things about Halloween is that is does not discriminate. No mater your race, religion, or age or where you are on the political or economic spectrum, you can partake in Halloween shenanigans and celebrate. That being said, check out some ways you can enjoy your holiday.

Here are some great ways you can celebrate Halloween and spend this Spooktacular Holiday!

1. Carve your pumpkin
2. Buy candy. There are often pretty good sales at the drug stores on Halloween. Keep in mind they are often picked over.
3. Have a warm glass of hot apple cider. If that is not your thing, go for a hot chocolate!
4. Hit up a Haunted house.
5. Make a fun halloween craft. There are so many adorable options. I highly recommend hitting up Pinterest or Google for some ideas.
6. Watch your fave Halloween movie or show. Some good options are: Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Ghostbusters. Or an old scary classic like Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street. Heck, why not make I a marathon!
7. Cook pumpkin seeds.
8. Make a Halloween inspired dinner! There are so many fun ideas on Pinterest.
9. Play some fun and spooky games. You can read about my Foxxy5 top picks for some recommendations.
10. If you have kids, take them out trick or treating. If you don’t, dress up, put on some creepy tunes and pass out candy to the neighborhood kids. ALL of the neighborhood kids. There should be no shame in the teenage game.

What ways do you celebrate Halloween?

However you spend it, stay safe and have a Fa-Boo-Lous Halloween!