Share your Halloween preparation tips with Cadbury - £300 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

Preparing for any celebration (Halloween no exception!) can be easier when you have the knowledge of others to help you out. With this in mind, Cadbury would like to hear about the ways you prepare for Halloween - whether you have creative costume ideas, crafty Halloween decorating skills - really any way you get trick-or-treat ready come the 31st October.

Do you have any great costume ideas? Maybe you have tips for creating a fabulous spooky look indoors or for when trick or treaters come up to your door? What are your ways of ensuring everyone has fun when going out trick or treating on Halloween? Whatever your tips and tricks for preparing for Halloween, please share them below to be entered into a prize draw where one lucky MNer will win a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

Thread closing 20th October.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

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Decorated cardboard boxes on head is a quick way to make "Minecraft" character costumes.

I buy my daughters costumes the week before and make up all the Halloween bags so they're ready and I can decorate the house. I make some decorations with the kids then we pick some out at the shop and decorate the night before Halloween so it's ready for trick or treaters.

Glow stick bracelets and necklaces/ headbands are a fun way to make sure the children are seen while trick or treating during a dark evening.

We spend hours planning costumes, food, games, stories. This year falng on a Tuesday we are already rueing how we can't stay up too la El I get ideas for food from internet and supermarket magazines. Costumes are just dreamt up in our heads.

We put up some bought decorations but usually make some things the weekend before. Milk cartons with black spooky faces make good ghosts - cut hole in back and pop in a battery tealight for an even better effect.

Get empty toilet rolls. Cut eye shapes in them. Stick a glow stick inside and hide them round your garden.

Instant spooky eyes everywhere!

Usually buy costumes, if they can decide. There have been times that they just use old clothes and make up to make zombies, or all black jeans and T for a vampire.

Then the house needs decorating. Tinsel with skulls and pumpkins. Animated zombie and ghost set, plastic spiders etc everywhere

A good party game. Cook and cool a load of spaghetti and put it in a bucket. Hide lots of ping pong 'eyeballs' in the spaghetti. How many eyeballs can you grab in a minute? The one with the most is the winner. Be warned, this is messy! Maybe spread a wipe clean cloth out underneath! Great fun though.

We carve a pumpkin each - well grown-ups carve and kids design! We make our own decorations and draw Halloween pictures. Baking involves spooky biscuits and cakes. With half-term usually leading up to it there is a big build-up to get really excited.
Costumes are shop bought but customised with things we have at home.
I never really celebrated Halloween as a child but it is such a big thing now that you have to embrace it.

Be sure to make dinner reservations at a good restaurant and precook tickets for a movie/theatre in advance so that you're not stuck at home telling children that you don't have any candy and they should just leave when your doorbell rings every five minutes.

Apocalypse-I don't understand your toilet roll eye shapes but it sounds good-have you a pic?

I bought a load of stuff at 90% off 5 years ago in Sainsburys -it's still going & hope to continue to be invited to my bro's annual Halloween party!

A couple of easy food dishes is all we need & enough effort for me, though there is a chicken wire dress-bodice & skirt moulded & sprayed with glow in the dark spray that Id love to do & put in the garden

Like this!

Absolutely nothing! We don't tend to get trick or treaters coming round our start and i don't much like Halloween, so it's a non event for us.

We love creating our own Halloween costumes from charity and pound shop finds. Last year I dressed up as Velma from scooby doo (orange jumper from a charity shop, knee length socks, cheap bob wig and glasses from pound shop). My daughter dressed up as Coraline with face paint button eyes and a cheap blue wig from poundland.

Without meaning to sound a 'party pooper' my kids don't enjoy halloween so we celebrate in other ways instead. We still enjoy fun food and fun with friends and games but avoid anything they find scary. so my tip would be not to feel pressured just because it's what others do and do your own thing instead with family and friends that's your own kind of fun.

A neighbour who was decorating a room upstairs and CBA going to the door every 5 mins got a big piece of cardboard and wrote on it:
"I am busy decorating. Please help yourselves to some sweets but don't be greedy, leave some for others".

He placed a big bucket of sweets outside. Hence no mithering kids and no getting house egged for not answering Imaycopythisidea

I found an excellent way to deter the trick or treaters from constantly ringing our bell last year was to hang surgical gloves filled with sweets along our hedge with eat me if you dare written on them.
We don't really celebrate Halloween here, my kids don't like dressing up....

I find glow sticks are a simple but great way to have some fun when out trick or treating. We like to make our own decorations like halloween paper chains from orange and black and purple paper, and decorate with those.

It’s all about the hair on this house.

So lots of coloured sprays for hair.

We stock up on chocolate and this year Dd wants to dress up as a skeleton or a bat!

We make spider and Halloween themed cakes. Children love it and like eating them.

I'm not really a big fan of Halloween so I don't do much to celebrate it, especially now that DC is old enough to do their own thing with friends. However, I do have a massively sweet tooth, so my tip is to wait until Halloween is over, and then go round all the supermarkets to buy lots of discounted Halloween chocolates and sweets to enjoy!

my children want to go pumpkin picking at a local farm so i think we will do this so that we have good pumpkins for halloween. They will enjoy decorating the ones that they have picked themselves

Buy loads of orange and black food colouring. Any sweets that can be made into spooky food!