Friday Favorites {Halloween Alternatives}

For several reasons, our family has chosen to opt out of celebrating Halloween.  Like most things, I know that people have strong feelings for and against the celebration of Halloween, so I am not going to get into that other than to say that neither my husband nor myself grew up celebrating Halloween, and we have chosen to continue that with our children as well. And in addition to that, both of my children (but B in particular) have developed a pretty strong fear of masks and scary costumes, so I don't think they would have let me take them trick-or-treating tonight even if I had wanted to.  In fact, they are actually afraid that trick-or-treater are going to come to OUR house and be dressed in scary costumes.  I have had to talk them down from the ledge a lot already today!

So, for those of you who don't celebrate Halloween--or for those who have children who are afraid and don't want to participate--I have some of my favorite Halloween alternatives.  Who says avoiding Halloween means not having any fun??!!

Candy Corn Supper

I basically took an iconic Halloween candy and created a meal around it.  I made a homemade pizza with concentric circles of cheddar cheese on the outside, pepperoni, and then kept the middle mozzerella.  I served the pizza with corn (naturally), and we had cupcakes with candy corns on top for dessert.  It was fun and yummy!

Church Fall Festivals

Church Fall Festivals have all the fun of Halloween without the scary.  Kids are usually welcome to wear a costume and there's lots of candy.  Typically, scary costumes are discouraged, but it is impossible to control what outside kids wear, so there are occasionally some gory costumes there.  Many church festivals offer games and/or bouncy castles and slides which my kids LOVE!  We briefly visited a local church's fall festival on Wednesday night, and it was lots of fun--complete with face painting and grilled burgers!

Journey with Jesus

Last year, our church did one of the best Halloween alternatives ever--the Journey with Jesus.  Kids wore costumes--mostly Bible character or Bible related (My kids were David and a duck.)--and were able to go door to door within the church.  But there wasn't just candy on the other side of the door.  Each door was a different location from the life of Jesus.  There was a person at each place to tell the story of what Jesus did in that place.  My kids talked about the Journey with Jesus for weeks afterward and were looking forward to it this year.  But for some reason, it didn't happen.  :(

Family Movie Night

I love to do a fun, themed movie night, and this would be a great activity to do at home on Halloween night if you aren't trick-or-treating.  Just pick a favorite movie, put a meal together and name the foods after some of the characters in the movie, eat the meal and settle into the couch together as a family to watch the movie.  I did lots of these to count down to our family's trip to Disney World last summer, and actually had planned to do a Monsters Inc. one, but didn't get to it.  I might have to pull that one out next Halloween--it seems fitting.

So there you have it!  I hope everyone has a fun and exciting night tonight whatever you choose to do.  And if you are looking for a trick-or-treat alternative, give one of these a try.