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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We get a bowl of wrapped sweets and some battery-powered tea lights (so kids can see the sweets!) to leave outside for trick or treaters while we are also out trick or treating. We try to have a few non-sweet options too for anyone who can't have sweets (glow sticks or stickers usually).

I really want to create some halloween chocolate 'bark' this year for our halloween party, i'll melt cadburys, pour it out, and decorate with edible eyes, candy corn, white chocolate buttons, oreos etc!! Then snap it in to smaller slabs to share out!

We always pick our own pumpkins and carve them together too. I want to try a pretty pumpkin this year, perhaps a glittery one!

Ive ordered bits for my costume as a mermaid too.

I really disapprove of this, particularly trick or treaters who scare our elderly neighbours 'for fun'.

We have the whole family up. We dress up, play games and go trick or treating. It's a good laugh with prizes and loads of gross food lol

Having discovered that I am terrible at carving pumpkins we now carve mini ghouls out of peppers and put tea lights in them - much easier!

Whatever you do don't buy Cadbury's for the treats. It's grim sickly sweet glop these days. Yes I am posting this on your sponsored thread to get the attention of the marketing bods at the multinational corporation who trashed my childhood favourite.

They grow pumpkins at DD's nursery (on a farm) so we always go and pick one and carve it. The kids quite enjoy dressing up but it's usually a bit last minute. It's all about the glow sticks for DD.

We have pumpkins, and we hollow them out. We do simple things like apple bobbing, and we go to a local garden with grottos which is amazing!!

The weekend before Halloween (or Saturday if it falls on a Sunday) we do our preparations for Halloween, with costumes decided in the week before. We have fun making our own costumes so first we go shopping for anything we need (but try to use things we already have as much as possible) then we get busy making them. I'm not against shop bought costumes but we enjoy creating them together for now.

We get pumpkins and they draw designs on, ready to be cut and emptied while they are in school so they arrive home to them lit on Halloween

We also use coloured icing to make spooky designs, then on Halloween or the night before when they are in bed, I bake cupcakes and Halloween night they ice them and use icing pens and their models to go on top.

By planting pumpkin seeds year, we have a family competition to see whose will grow the biggest pumpkin. Obviously a prize for the biggest one!
I've even caught the kids googling how to grow extra large vegetables.

Much preparation is done in form of decorating tips and templates, Minion theme last year was great.

Chopped up green jelly with tinned lychees added for Zombie eyes, or lemon jelly with black cherries stirred in for Witches Cauldron pudding.

Non-scary costume for sensitive DD. Then hide away upstairs all evening with downstairs lights out so no trick or treaters come round

Don't leave everything to the last minute!

We've been caught out before by leaving things to the last minute, and then finding everywhere has sold out of pumpkins and decent costumes in the kids sizes.

We haven't needed to hide from trick or treaters here though. The local custom is for trick or treaters to only visit decorated houses, and almost everyone seems to respect this.

We take it in turns with family friends to host a Halloween evening, just a couple of hours of spooky treats for the kids. Where we live it isn't really the done thing to go trick or treating, so this is how we make it fun for the little ones.

I am sooooo grumpy about Halloween. I hate how it's become such a big thing. My preparations involve knocking up
A quick costume for DS, buying sweets for trick or treaters, occasionally carving a pumpkin, and moaning the entire time

Last year school had a party so his costume was a pillow case with holes cut in the arms and a painted face.
We might carve a pumpkin and I'll buy a few sweets for the trick or treaters.

I prepare by buying all our decorations in the sales after the previous Halloween!

Costumes are done a few weeks early so we have time to get it right. Can't take the dramas of it going wrong on the night and stroppy children. 👻

I buy costumes as I'm not very creative (!) - DS will be a skeleton and DD a bat this year. It might seem a bit if a copy out but one of my tips would be to buy ready made if you can!!

We also get involved in Trick or Treating but only by allowing them to come to us (we don't go out). That way we get to see many costumes & many people but get rid of sweets instead of obtaining them!!

DS has chosen some decorations from the supermarket and his skeleton costume but want to wear it with his pumpkin mask 😂.
We will go pick some pumpkins a few days prior to Halloween at the local farm, he's on count down. Then decorate ready to display outside.
We will have a mix of sweet treats for the children that knock.
I don't feel he is old enough for trick or treating yet so we will decorate some Halloween themed biscuits

I love Halloween. I add a few decorations to my box in the post-Halloween sale so have a great collection.

I do food for anyone that wants to start here (finger hot dogs, decorated cakes etc.) then stay in to answer the door while my DDs and their friends go round the village in small groups.

I used to accompany them but they're too cool for me now.

We look for pumpkin designs online as you can get brilliant and varied really cheaply.

I have bought dd outfits in last years post Halloween sale. It's cost me a fraction of the price and I don't need to pull something out of the bag at the last minute

we have a rusty old Roses tin that we fill with sweets and a modern Roses tin that looks all sparkly and we fill this one with stones. Then we offer Trick-or-treaters the choice of tins....

I've decided to dress my toddler as a mummy putting bandages on him and my eldest is going as a spider. We've made home. Made costumes already and bought cadburys treats in preparation for trick or treaters. Love Halloween 🎃🎃🎃🎃

My favourite part of Halloween (and there is not much I like about it tbh) is the pumpkins, as lots of excuses to make pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread etc. We buy a couple of large pumpkins and carve them to decorate the front step, and then buy those cute mini pumpkins to decorate the mantelpiece.
A few Halloween themed cakes and treats for tea, and a tub of sweets for children that knock. That's about the limit.
The children raid the dressing up box for an array of last year's costumes and hats, with a bit of 'scary' make up.
I'm quite happy when its over!