Four Creative Ideas for Halloween Fun

Halloween is less than a week away and if your kids are anything like mine, they are counting the days.

In addition to and helping your kids into their , get creative with some of these easy and inexpensive ideas.

1. Spider Lollipops: This treat is so easy and will be the hit of your child’s class party. Just take four pipe cleaners and wrap them once around the base of a Tootsie Pop. Bend the legs so they will stand up on their own, then add a dab of glue to get googly eyes on them. Voila.
2. Spooky Spaghetti: Before heading out for the night, give your ghosts and goblins a healthy dinner with a twist. Take a small pumpkin and thoroughly wash it. Then cut off the top and empty out the center. Make spaghetti just as you normally would. I used two different types of long pasta. Toss it with your favorite sauce and make it extra spooky by adding eyeballs (mushrooms or black olives). Serve it all inside the pumpkin. While you'll need to do a little prep work for this, the looks on your kids' faces when you serve them their own personal pumpkin dishes will be well worth it.
3. Warm Bug Juice: Warm your trick-or-treaters up with this scary beverage. Put a half gallon of apple cider in your Crock-Pot and add a little cinnamon. Then add fresh fruit—apple slices, pineapple or strawberries. Let it brew in the crock-pot for a few hours on low. When your kids come in chilly from their Halloween evening, serve them a goblet of the warm bug juice, garnished with a gummy worm. Warm cider will never be the same. Prefer to serve a cold beverage? Try this recipe.
4. Pumpkin Seed Craft: Wondering what to do with all those leftover pumpkin seeds? Create a work of art. My kids had a blast doing this craft. They painted dried pumpkin seeds and glued them on foam pumpkins purchased from Michael’s. Even my 20-month-old was able to participate—just like his big brother. Then we got creative and made all kinds of jack-o-lantern’s with beads, sequins and candy.