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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I'm the wrong age for Hallowe'en. When I was growing up it was just something you heard about Americans doing. Hardly anyone ever came trick or treating and if anyone did knock on your door, you just looked at them as if they were mad and they went away! So I feel quite uncomfortable with it and we don't really do it here. I used to do the odd pumpkin, sweets, cakes and party type treats so the kids didn't feel too left out as their friends were all talking about it but now they are older, they aren't overly interested either. In terms of costumes, I've found ripped up sheets and fake blood can be used in so many ways...

we buy sweets for any that might come to the house on the actual evening we go on an organised Halloween parade through a local village where the locals throw sweets and there are drinks and toffee apples organised, my girls have their witches costumes and hats ready

A bit off topic but I blame Asda for the recent ‘festival’ and subsequent buying onslaught around Halloween.

Ever since it was bought out by (American) Walmart we have had more and more Halloween tat appearing in shops, just like In the US.

I won’t be part of it on principle (same with Valentine’s day and anything else designed to part you from your money for ephemeral shite).

So there you go Cadbury, lots of people on this thread happy to embrace Halloween and its celebrations. And a huge section who are distinctly ‘meh’ and cynical about the whole thing.

We always make little bags of sweets up for trick or treaters, rather than having one big bowl. It saves the kids worrying and only taking one tiny sweet, or taking handfuls and leaving none!

We each carve a pumpkin and use the flesh to make a huge pan of pumpkin soup. We also make lots of other scary food, including liquorice spider webs with chocolate tea cake and fingers spiders. We all dress up, but the star of the show every year is our Chihuahua/Yorkhire Terrier Cross in her witch's dress, greeting the Trick or Treaters!

Japanese udon noodles make great zombie brains / intestines for party food

Trying to avoid it really, though I do love pumpkins and all the different squashes in the shops, so I have bought a couple of them and intend to make pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread. I might also (because the children don't want me to) carve very smiley faces in the pumpkins which is MUCH nicer than all this ghoulish scary stuff. I keep telling them this (two are teenagers and one is almost a teenager, before you start thinking I'm being cruel) but they seem to like more than anything the opportunity to wear loads of white and black make up and (especially) get lots of sweets. (nb. I don't let them knock on doors, they go to a neighbours for a party who buys them several kilos of sweets, and decorates her house to within an inch of its life, and they all get very excited about everyone knocking at the door). It's a weird old thing.

We tend to turn outgrown clothes into shredded zombie clothes for fancy dress add some fake blood and a bit of green and white face paint and costume is complete

We have decorations and decorate the front door too if we want trick or treaters. We love pumpkin carving and try and do something creative and intricate once the kids have down their ones. Standard purchase of haribo multipack for knocks at the door.

well I have just been to Aldi to buy my pumpkin ready, started to carve the eye, then the second eye did not match the first, so a little tweaking sawing, huffing and puffing, came up with this .....
The costumes will still fit from last year, a witch and a skeleton, and me as Winifred Sanderson from Hocus Pocus. I am making hot dogs, and rice crispie buns, and have stocked up with goodies from the pound shops for my trick or treaters. I love seeing the youngsters in their costumes and always give lots of treats to whoever comes to my door. We love watching re runs of Mona the teenage witch and will decorate my windows in pumpkin and ghost gel stickers.

We have fun carving pumpkins and make sure we have a good supply of treats for any callers. We also leave out a plate of food for our dearly departed relatives

We pick costumes and make them or buy them from the nearby charity shop as they sell them for about £2!
We decorate our house, we are on a budget so we reuse everything.
We buy a big bag of sweets and treats and hand them out or when we go out we leave them with a note saying to take just one.
This year we are going to decorate the garden too, maybe with lights. We thought we could use our Christmas ones?!

We don't do too much as my DS is only a toddler and gets upset at halloween decorations & costumes. I've got some halloween themed cookie cutters so we might make some horror themed gingerbread this year.

Halloween is a favourite in our house we always dress up and have parties. This year we are going to one I decorate the house with balloons and spooky spiders, rats and Skelton's I have spider table cloths and pumpkin lights. I make the purple porridge for breakfast which is a magic potion my kids love it. I make finger looking hot dogs, wormy chocolate cupcakes and a pumpkin bundt cake. We also make white chocolate dipped Oreo mummy cake pops very scary. Great time of year if not my favourite we all carve a pumpkin and enjoy pumpkin soup so comforting this time of year.

Dd3 has been making decorations all week, and putting up fake cobwebs. DP has carved a pumpkin. Dc1 has hung the life-sized hermaphrodite rag doll out of an upper window. That really is quite creepy.

Definitely pumpkin carving from patterns on the internet, some fab choicea are available.

I buy the costumes well in advance to avoid disappointment. When I was a kid, my parents never let us go trick or treating or even celebrate Halloween (which we really wanted to do !) so I let my kids go wild lol.
I also amend the meal plan for a spooky meal once a week during the month of October, spooky snacks during October and this year was the first year that we went on a family pumpkin picking trip (it's the first year there was anywhere near us we could do it !) which was lovely, so the house is now decorated and the kids pumpkins are sitting by the fireplace.

We don't go trick or treating, but I make sure that we have a bowl full of sweets by the door for whoever may come

Sweets have been purchased, costume is ready and I have to still do a pumpkin. Gah.