Tag: halloween

Halloween activities you can still do!

by Charlie-Jane, posted in family life, Home Stuff, lifestyle

Now that it’s more and more clear Halloween won’t be happening in the normal way this year there’s still lots of ways to have fun. Last year I threw a Halloween party for Elijah and his little friends and this year we can’t even trick or treat. But with a little positivity we can still enjoy ourselves!

So here’s some things you can still do to celebrate Halloween safely.

Pumpkin picking. You can go pumpkin picking outdoors and safely. There you can distance, sanitise and make a day of it. Most places require a time slot too so there’s not too many people out there with you. It’s a great way to exercise and enjoy some time with others and feel the escape of the house. You also support the farms and small businesses too! We love it and have been every year for last five years!

Pumpkin carving. Once you have a pumpkin you still can enjoy carving or painting it. You can download stencils online and print of or you can design your own pattern to carve. Kids love the sensory activity of scooping the pumpkins out! Make it into a fun activity for all the activity.

Halloween crafts. Colouring and paining activities with themes such as Halloween can be great too. There’s so many printable activity packs free online for the taking. You can also paint some loo rolls and add pipe cleaners to make spiders! The possibilities are endless.

Halloween baking! Bake a cake or cookies with a Halloween theme and enjoy making spooky treats! Cut cookies before baking with a ginger bread man shape and you can make a skeleton! Make hotdogs and cut bits up to look like fingers then add ketchup for blood!

Dress up and have a little disco at home! Make Halloween snacks too! Have your own party. Play party games and enjoy yourself. Skype friends and have a virtual party too!

If your not isolating see family or friends for a coffee and call it trick or treating? Track and trace compliant of course!

Get cosy, watch Halloween movies, listen to spooky music. Whatever it is you do to get in the Halloween spirit. Just remember you’re not alone we’re all in this together.

No matter what you do just enjoy yourself and have a spooky time!

What age is a good age to go trick or treating?

by Charlie-Jane, posted in Uncategorized

Something I always see every year at my door is children too young and teenagers knocking on my door. Now I don’t mind trick or treaters I quite enjoy coming and seeing their outfits but one thing I don’t like is when children are to young or too old.

I personally wouldn’t take Elijah out at 2 in a thin costume knocking on doors for candy. First of all Elijah doesn’t understand he isn’t allowed to eat the candy immediately and will have a tantrum on someone’s door step. Secondly he’ll try and walk into someone’s house which makes me very uncomfortable. If you’re taking a older child trick or treating and your kid is going with them I don’t see as much a problem as they learn from that. But young children do not need candy in their diets so why take them to collect candy? I think I’ll wait till Elijahs 4 to take him when he can understand what is going on and understand he’s not to go in strangers houses or eat the candy immediately. A few of my friends are taking their children at 2 or younger and I think that’s great if they think there children will enjoy it. I’m not judging parenting here so if you want to take your few month old child that can’t stand to get you some candy then do so! However you may have a few people that do think why does a baby need candy or why is this toddler screaming on my step or trying to come in my house. If I was to take Elijah trick or treating it would be to family members house only which we might do tonight as he’d be able to experience getting candy for dressing up with people he’s comfortable around.

On the other side of things I think there are always children to old to be trick or treating I stopped at 12/13 which I thinks the perfect age to stop. I’ve had kids that look 16/17 on my door and I’ve told them to go away. I think parents need to say to their kids do you not think you’re a little bit old to be dressing up to get candy? This also intimidated me a bit when I have rude teenagers in a gang at my door and no doubt scares elderly people worrying they’ll be robbed or hurt if they don’t give in to whatever they want or have their house egged. It still annoys me a lot of shops won’t sell eggs near Halloween as kids buy them to egg houses.

So take your kids whatever age you want but just think are they going to enjoy it or are you going to enjoy it more?

We had a Halloween party!

by Charlie-Jane, posted in Uncategorized

As per my previous post on how I brought lots of cheep decorations for a little kids party we finally had the party last night and it went great!

We brought some food on Thursday and prepared the food overnight on Friday night and Saturday morning. I spent Friday night making spooky cupcakes and brownies and the morning making bits and bobs for the guests like hot dogs, sandwiches and more. We blew up a lot of balloons and Elijah helped (blew his hand) and threw them around the room. Elijah and I set up the tables and he brang me the decorations to put up it was quite nice working as a team.

The place looked quite nice and we just put some music in the background. We all dressed in fancy dress and had a blast doing it. Elijah loves his dinosaur outfit and will no doubt wear again. We didn’t do any games as the party was for toddlers and the oldest children where happy playing too. We just got all the toys out and the kids had a blast and let everyone help themselves to the buffet. The kids all had fun and played nicely and then we cleaned toys away and played with balloons. The children took balloons and candy home and had a fun time. It was nice as we had 9 children come so wasn’t too many people and wasn’t to hectic either!

By the end of the night when everything was cleaned away, we felt so loved to have such lovely friends. We where so greatful for all who also cooked and brought food for us all to share and had made such a effort to make them Halloween themed too! It went down a treat and a nice little party for all his friends and our friends too! We will do this again another year but for now just to relax and prepare for Elijah and his little friends birthday in a few weeks time.

Pumpkin picking at foxes farm

by Charlie-Jane, posted in Uncategorized

Every year for the last 5 years we have gone pumpkin picking together, for the last four we have been to foxes farm in colchester. A short journey from our home we love going every year. We have taken other family members and friends and this year we went just three of us. Every year we get lots of photos and its been lovely as i have a photo of Elijah in my tummy, at almost a year and now.We will continue this tradition every year now as i think its a great activity to do and something to look back on every year.

The perfect family friendly autumnal activity for all ages which happens to be really cheep aswell. How it works is you park in their massive field and then walk to the pumpkin patch. The staff are really nice and helpful and every year they have more and more things to do. This year they had food carts and they haven’t had that before so you can even grab a drink and something to eat while your walking around or finishing off . There are plenty of places to take lovely family photos together such as on hay bales or photo set ups and next to signs. There are so many things to do for little ones. Little slides, climbing on hay bales, corn maze and obviously picking the pumpkins.

There are pumpkins as far as the eye can see their are all sorts of pumpkins there are small ones, big ones, different coloured ones. It’s lovely knowing you get to pick your own pumpkin and take it home. You know where its come from and you took it home yourself. Its a fun activity for yourself and your family. It may be a bit more expensive then a shop but they don’t charge you to attend only for the pumpkins. We brought 5 miniature pumpkins and one medium one and it only came to a tenner. We loved getting muddy and getting stuck in the mud. We have been in the rain before and the sun and overall it is always a lovely day come rain or shine.

Elijah loved being free to run around and choose some pumpkins. Once he got the hang of it he was filling the wheelbarrow and loving it. He enjoyed the puddle jumping to and squelching in the mud. When we took him to the minature pumpkins he was perfect size for this and loved grabbing them and holding them. When he got to the pumpkin patch of the bigger ones he would not stop till he found the right one when he found it he shouted “its too heavy” and asked for “help”. He tried to lift himself and fell back on a pumpkin and smashed it with his bum! He was very happy when we put it in the wheelbarrow. He enjoyed sitting in the wheelbarrow and guarding his pumpkins.

Its easy to pay and i think you can even pay by card now but i would check before you go on their website. Dogs are not allowed so humans only properly to stop risk of dog poo and dogs eating the pumpkins.We will be using the miniature pumpkins to decorate the house for Halloween and the bigger one we will carve closer to Halloween as a fun activity! I’m thinking about using the insides for once and baking something with it!

Below are some photos i took on my phone and on our camera. Enjoy!