To ask about your Halloween traditions and ideas?

[DastardlyDoris]

Do you make a big deal of it and do stuff that takes weeks to prepare and costs £££ or do you ignore it, shut the curtains and pretend to be out? We are a split household on this! DC would make it the biggest celebration of the year. Does anyone do fun stuff that doesn't take loads of effort or cost a fortune?

We’re ‘the’ Halloween house on our block, but only because we may have unwittingly moved to the corner of Vampire & Zombie Sts 9 years ago. It’s huge where we live. Like, at least 80 kids coming by, plus families. And now we have a big box of decorations (one new one every year) it seems a waste not to do it again!

Our finances have taken a tumble this year, so we’re changing a fair bit to ‘do it on the cheap’. No more customised sweet treats (Pinterest chupachup spiders) and buying in Halloween themed sweets. Supermarket will do. Also recycling DH’s costume from 3 years back. Selling off a few of my & dd’s past costumes this week on gumtree this week, to sponsor this year’s ones!

I must say there’s not a lot of effort involved these days either, I’ve got it down to a fine art. I buy a real pumpkin, but draw the face with thick black sharpie instead of carving. I check the batteries a few days out (we have quite a few creepy lights & sounds ‘toys’). They are the same each year, but never get old.

This year I’m pretty excited about my costume. I’m going to be the ‘Evil Tooth Fairy’. Dressed like a normal fairy, but with a pink/turquoise striped wig (like toothpaste), a tiara with glittery toothbrushes attached and a floral tool belt with toy tools in it (dripping ‘blood’). Cos I’m a lazy tooth fairy, can’t be waiting around for teeth to fall out on their own, can I?

I figure I’ll hand out sweeties while cackling that it’ll also help their teeth fall out earlier...

Our children just get dressed up, probably in last year's outfits if they still fit or at least last year's mask and a monster T-shirt if not ('cos at least then they'll be able to get plenty of wear out of it), and we go up & down our street, taking their Halloween buckets with them, knocking on the doors of decorated houses. We usually have a carved pumpkin or two and the disco light on in the hall and hand out sweets to any callers. We're usually done by about 7.30-8pm.

We carve pumpkins and put a halloween wreath on the door. The DSs decorate the snug which is where we spend most of our evenings.

I don’t like trick or treating but my DC really want to go so I let my DM take them . They always dress up even to sit at home and I always make Halloweeny food for dinner. We watch hocus pocus usually or monster house. Always have a Halloween tree and decorate the fireplace too. This year we’re going pumpkin picking and will obviously carve them. I’m having an ELCS two days before Halloween this year though so we’re celebrating it the weekend before.

I hate the idea of trick or treating, but we have a party for the kids each year.

We decorate the house, kids dress up, and do party games and watch a Halloween movie.

Wrap the daddy (instead of mummy) was always one of my favourite games with rolls and rolls of toilet roll.

This year we are going to learn the moves from Thriller and have a special effect gruesome makeup session.