Halloween Favorites

One year for Halloween, I found myself with some extra money and a whole lot of time. I decided to buy one of those enormous 100+lb pumpkins that you see displayed at the local pumpkin patch. I recruited my siblings to help me load it into the car, and then Tim sketched an awesome jack-o-lantern face that was one of those perceptual illusions of a face and a ghost. We spent hours gutting it, and carving it with saws and huge knives! Ahhhh, precious memories. It was especially fun to imagine the looks on the faces of those punk neighborhood kids who would come around every 30th of October and smash the carved pumpkins in the street. They wouldn't be able to lift the thing! haha!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I've been doing my best to try to add in some smaller and simpler traditions to help the kids get in on the fun. Here are a few we've done or will do this year:

1.) Big Pumpkin by Erika Silverman. Our favorite this year! I love the illustrations in this book, and the story is repetitive and simple. It's about a witch who grows a Big Pumpkin. Halloween is coming, and she wants to pick the pumpkin and make pumpkin pie. The only problem is, she can't get the big thing off the vine! Her fellow spooks team up to help her: ghost, vampire, mummy, and finally bat. They work together and share pumpkin pie at the end! It's darling. Go buy yourself a copy.

A friend of mine sent me some blacklines for the characters in the book. I colored and laminated them, and we use them as stick puppets as we read the story. We've also done coloring pages. I'm going to post the pictures so you can print your own, okay?

2.) Pumpkin Chain-link Countdown. My kids were a little young for this this year. They were good helpers with the glue, and deciding on the face, but Boo doesn't want to "break" the pumpkin by ripping of a link each day. So, Halloween may never arrive at our house. Oh, well. It's a fun inexpensive decoration!What? Pumpkins at your house aren't purple and pink?

3.) Halloween Cookies. Oh, yeah... Get yourself some Halloween cookie cutters, a yummy sugar cookie recipe and bake away! Share with the neighbors so you don't eat all of them while your husband's at work.

4.) Paper Bag Lanterns. Thanks for this fun decoration idea from Sally (and Martha Stewart) Step-by-step directions are found here. Probably more for adults to do than for kids, but they can sure enjoy the results! Don't they look like fun?