HALLOWEEN - MNHQ WANT YOUR TOP TIPS FOR SURVIVING THE 31ST

[AbbyMumsnet]

Hi all, we're putting together a Halloween guide and, as ever, would like to enlist your invaluable support. Please place your top tips here.

The sort of things we want to cover include:

What to do if you hate Halloween. Hide and turn the lights out?
How to make the most of it - decorating tips/costume tips etc etc
If you stay in but want to partake, how can you make things more fun for visiting kids? Scary music and Scream masks?
What are your fave party games?
Party food - got any good recipes?
Best way to carve a pumpkin.
What to do with the pumpkin you have just carved out.
Acceptable tricks to play - are there any?
* Top tips for safe and successful trick or treating: Do you only go to houses that have a pumpkin outside? Should you always aim for the posh houses owned by Americans - or just the road leading up towards school?

Over to you, oh wise ones...

things that go bump in the night.

I put the babies to bed, close the blinds and turn out the lights. I would rather sit in the dark all night than answer the door to trick or treaters [grrrrrr].

I will consider having halloween parties for my boys when they are older to avoid them going out begging, ahem, I mean trick or treating

i love halloween. i put a great big pumpkin outside, i find children don't knock unless there is something to welcome them anyway.

and always buy far too many sweets so you can eat the remainder for the rest of november. yum

I love halloween but the school here bans it as un-Christian, and the boys don't get half the fun they used to from it.

My tip: bridgwater carnival, week after, come and say Hi, lots of fun for all kids and loads of scary 9and not) costumes / floats

Best tip to rpevent repeat visors.... amke up fairy cakes with wrong ingredients so they taste bloody awful [blish]- still never worked out what I did wrong there, only a bloody fairy cake!

Or get your kids to stick to traidiotn and hand all teenagers (my Mum does this as well) or trick or treaters with no soctumes an overly polished penny

I hate it , My DD hates it and is terrified of the costumes .
This year we will be away in Lanzarote on holiday so we will avoid all the distress, thank goodness

Oh Peachy, I could give you pages of ammunition to turn that argument over.

Un-Christian....pah!

Take the batteries out of the doorbell, shut all the curtains, turn off the lights, sit in the dark and pretend you're out.

I hate Hallowe'en, can you tell ?

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this time of year (and xmas for hiding from JWs) is wheni apprieciate my house being hard to get to!

the DCs aren't allowed to trick or treat...they aren't allowed e numbers (i had a strop and they are affected by them)

anyway, hallowen isn;t about going out and getting sweets. i don't quite know how to explain to a 2 and 4 yo what it is about so we call it witches night )easy cop out - sorry)

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cod, near where i used to live that would mean your house got broken into!!

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The best advice I could gives this?

Book a holiday abroad.. (preferably somewhere sunny)...

WORMS IN DIRT
chocolate custard with gummy worms hidden inside, then crumble a chocolate biscuit on top (yum!!!)

freeze a small plastic bug in ice cubes (for adults/older kids) or gummy sweets for younger ones to put in punch

cut bread into a ghost shape and spread with cream cheese, use raisins for eyes

floats/milkshakes with green limeade and mint ice cream for a witches brew

GAMES

pass the casket (make a casket shaped box from cardboard with a lid - when music stops they can reach in and get a prize)

cut out skeleton parts from white paper, and kids can assemble them with split pins (need to hole punch where the joins will be)

pin the nose on the witch

have a few pumpkins with a hole cut at the top and hollowed out, then put stuff in it for the kids to feel- ie put the seeds back in, or canned peach slices, jelly etc

mummy wrapping contest - partner the kids up and give one child a roll of toilet roll to wrap the other up. (very messy but the kids like it!!)

you can make ghosts bu draping some crepe paper over balloons (may have to suspend them from the ceiling

ghost pinata (can make this with the kids in the weeks before)

Hmmm, thats all I can remember for now. My son's birthday is just before halloween, so we did a halloween party for him last year - The kids LOVED it!!! Not all community halls etc will allow a halloween party on their premises, so check it is ok first. I love halloween, and i don't understand why its banned so much here - its the one night of the year when KIDS can be the scary thing. LOVE IT

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Ta!

DS1's birthday is on Halloween. He will be 7 this year and both he and i are getting a little tired of the same themed party every year!!!!!

I prefered halloween when we were in Scotland as all the trick or treaters would say a rhyme so I felt they deserved a treat.
I hate kids that want money as a treat too.
I don't expect we'll have too many as although we are on a main road not many people realise there are houses there!

Have a massive and potentially scary looking dog

When the doorbell rings, squirt some shaving foam round dog's mouth and open door shouting "RABID DOG, RABID DOG!" very loudly and screaming at the top of your voice (while cunningly inferring to said dog that a large bone lurks in the front garden)

Assorted 3 foot high devils, bats and witches will miraculously clear from your doorstep in seconds.

I would just like to add a note of caution to anyone buying a 'spooky sounds' cd. I bought one once, from Toys R Us (I think) and it sounded like the soundtrack to a snuff movie. Reduced (hardnut goth) DD to tears it was that scary. Totally creeped me out.

Im a bit of a traditionalist i leave a lantern in the window and a plate of soul cakes on the doorstep, I always set an extra place at the table too