Holidays
Halloween Traditions!
Oct
With the spooky holiday season upon us, it’s time to conjure up our family holiday traditions and consider a few new things to try. It’s one of our favorite times of the year. The trees are ablaze with fall colors of reds and yellows, the days are warm, the nights are chilly, and houses around the neighborhood are beginning to show signs of Halloween.
Photo Copywrite Utah.com. Photographer credit: unknown.
Even though life is increasingly busy with a remodel of the shop and an upcoming business trip for me, we will be taking time as a family to do some Halloween decorating in the next few days. It’s so easy to miss opportunities to make lifelong memories with our children. So, it’s that much more imperative to take advantage of our holiday traditions.
1Sister2Sister Halloween Traditions
Decorating:
Like most families, decorating the house in spooky decor is usually the first thing we do to kick off the holiday season. We have several totes full of Halloween decorations, so creating variety is not too difficult from year to year. This year, we are splitting our decorations between the house and the shop. It will be interesting to see what we create. I’m sure a certain little girl will have plenty of good ideas for spooking up the place.
Jack-o-Lanterns:
We haven’t made a tradition out of selecting pumpkins, but my favorite memories are the times we visited a pumpkin farm. One of our local farms sets up a giant hay slide, zip lines, bounce houses, chicken races, a corn maze, and of course, a wagon ride into the pumpkin patch. After a day of play, we hop on the wagon and pick out our Halloween pumpkins right off the vine. When the time is right, Danya and I will carve them up and place them on the front porch.
Costumes:
Who doesn’t like dressing up for Halloween? Well, Theresa and I don’t dress up very often, but that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it. Of course, the kids love it! This year, Danya want’s to be a Creeper from Minecraft. Fair warning to the neighborhood, you are about to have your stuff exploded (figuratively, of course)!
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds:
If you’ve never roasted fresh pumpkin seeds, you don’t know what you’re missing. Theresa soaks them fresh from our Jack-o-Lanterns in water for a few days, then roasts them to a golden brown. It should come as no surprise that they don’t last long.
Spooky Movie Nights:
Nothing puts you in the Halloween mood more than a spooky tale. In recent years, we have chosen family-appropriate Halloween movies to hunker down in bed and watch. Danya usually picks from a host of classics. Some of our favorites are:
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Coraline
- Halloweentown
- Hocus Pocus
- Monster House
- Addams Family
Halloween Day:
Trunk-or-treat, trick-or-treat, chili with bones, and candy! Considering Halloween falls on a weekend this year, I may start the day by making “ghost” pancakes. But, breakfast is not the meal everyone looks forward to at our house. That honor goes to Theresa’s dinner. Every year she makes a pot of killer-thriller chili (okay, I just made that name up, but wow, it’s good). What could be better to come home to after blowing up the neighborhood for candy than a nice warm bowl of homemade chili? Nothing, that’s what. Especially when it comes with breadstick bones! Mmmmm. Is it Halloween yet?
Tell us your Halloween traditions in the comment form below. We would love to hear about them!
