Halloween Extravaganza 2017

Hello everyone!  Its been a while since I’ve popped on here.  I’ve been trying to catch my bearings from a busy summer.   Truthfully I’ve felt that I’ve lost a little wind in my sails  (thank you low b12 and iron :/)  and sometimes it’s good to step back and focus on what you’ve got on your plate already before heaping on more, right?

Today though we had our annual Halloween Extravaganza for the kiddos on my side of the family.    I’ve written about it in the past and thought I would share some things we did during ours in case you are looking for any ideas for your next Halloween festival or get together.  We have quite a few small kids so we keep it pretty G rated – nothing grotesque or too scary.  I try to come up with few new ideas every year while bringing back a favorite or two as well.  So here we go, festivities included:

1. Bobbing for apples.  We’ve done this a few years in a row now because the kids always love it.  Truthfully I can’t do it myself to save my soul without getting water up my nose but the kids seemed to have mastered it!  After the kids get their apples (or you just grab your apple from the bag in my case) we cut them into slices and then I have caramel and fun toppings such as crushed nuts, Oreos and candies so they can make their own platter of apple nachos. I find this to be  a much easy alternative than trying to make dipped apples.

2. A pumpkin egg hunt.  An idea borrowed from the good old Easter Bunny!  I ordered a pack of 100 orange eggs off Amazon and then drew Jack O Lantern faces on them and filled them with candy.   We hid them around the yard and then set the kids free to round them up.   Because we have a mix of older and smaller kids, I set a rule of how many they could find.  Once the older kids found their limit  they were to help the younger kids find theirs.  This just made it fair for everyone.

3.  Another back by popular demand activity.  The leaf hunt.  This one is way too easy.  Get a big pile of leaves, mix in some fun prizes and let the kiddos search them out.

4.  Hayride.  My dad is always good to bring the old Allis Chalmer over with the hay wagon for us to load up on and take a spin around.   He completes it by bringing popcorn and playing all the classic Halloween tunes over a blue tooth speaker.

5.  A fun left and right game.  Have you ever played one?  Its perfect for white elephant gift exchanges.  For this I filled paper bags with some fun goodies and put a different foam Halloween mask in each bag.  I then sealed the bags up so the kids didn’t know what they were going to get. I put the kids in  circle and gave a bag to each child while I read a story that had a bunch of “left” and “right” words in it (I found the story I read by searching pinterest) .  Every time they heard the word “left”  or “right”  they had to hand the package they were holding to the left or right.   It was fun and definitely kept them on their toes and listening so they could follow directions!  The little ones seemed to keep up by just following along with the big kids.

6.  We rounded out the activities by sprinkling a couple  filler store bought games of spider splat (kids safe darts basically) and Halloween twister (such a classic).

Afterwards we ate bbq’s (sloppy joe’s to any non-midwesterners out there) that I had cooking in the crockpot for extra convenience and visited while the kids worked off their sugar highs.  We are all so busy these days that I’m so thankful we can get together a couple times a year to make some fun cousin memories for our kiddos.    The party was a success and I’m hexausted – that’s happy exhausted 🙂

LOL (lots of love)

Heather