Halloween at Home: Our Trick or Treat Alternatives

Who loves trick or treating? If like me you’re wondering whether you can get away with not getting cold and soggy this Halloween, spook no further!

We have come up with some ideas so that you can spend Halloween at home whether you are being covid cautious or simply just want to stay warm and dry, don’t worry it can still be ghoulishly good!

Bobbing ‘n’ Biting

Bobbing for apples has always been one of our favourites at Halloween parties, you can keep it simple with just a bucket of water or change it up to make it extra special.

Go for it and make edible goo, pop the apples in and get monstrously messy! All you’ll need is:

• corn starch
• water
• Kool-Aid mix packet (sold on Amazon)

You’ll need equal quantities, so 1 cup of corn starch to one cup of water and 1 packet of Kool-Aid mix. Pop all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until you get a runny but goopy consistency. Scale up depending on the amount of goo you need. And get that plastic tablecloth out!

Too messy?

Then swap the apples out for a treat and ‘bob’ for doughnuts instead, lose the water and hang them up at varying heights. Extra points if you decorate the doughnuts beforehand, look at these fab examples!

Obviously this requires close parental supervision to make sure that each participant only sinks their teeth into their own doughnut, so you might as well join in too!!

Pumpkin Bowling

Any panic buyers amongst us? Do you still have plenty of toilet rolls knocking about from lockdown? Perfect, pumpkin bowling it is then!

This is such an easy activity, all you need is a pack of 6 gold nuggets – oops, I mean toilet rolls! A sharpie marker and a small pumpkin which can be real or fake as long as it’s got a little weight to it.

Draw your ghostly faces or Halloween messages onto the toilet rolls and stack them up into a pyramid. Then use your pumpkin as a bowling ball. Players get 1 point for every toilet roll they knock over. Please only discard the sheets with marker on and use up the rest of the roll so as not to waste it!

Ghostly Glowing Skeletons

This is one we personally had a lot of fun with over lockdown and all you need is a large packet of glow sticks!

For best results dress totally in black. Crack the glow sticks and sellotape them to your clothing in the shape of a skeleton. Don’t forget to connect some together to go around your face to make the head or alternatively use glow in the dark face paint.

Next step is to turn off all the lights, and pop on some ghoulishly good music and get throwing some spooky shapes.

To add to the atmosphere, you could cut out eye shapes into empty toilet rolls and pop in a glow stick, you will then have some spooky eyes watching you dance, or alternatively hang up some fearsome faces by drawing a face onto a balloon then popping a glowstick inside once inflated.

Every graveyard boogie needs a playlist check out these Halloween favourites:

A Petrifying Playlist

• Monster Mash – Bobby Pickett
• Thriller – Michael Jackson
• Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr
• Time Warp – Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Monster – Lady Gaga
• Get your Freak on – Missy Elliot
• Ghost – Ella Henderson

Happy Halloween Hunting

Set up a scavenger hunt around your home, hiding treats for your children to find along the way.

This is a great one that can easily be used for different age groups:

Or you could make a ghoulish ghost hunt – make lollipops into ghosts and hang them around the house and garden. Fabric squares, coffee filters or even our beloved toilet roll can be used to make these!

Devilish Decorations

We practically decorate the house for any occasion, I really don’t need much of an excuse but if we are all spending more time in the house this Halloween then why not decorate and give the kids something to smile about too! I tend to go for more of a general pumpkin/autumn theme rather than overly spooky, but I start adding bits to our home from October 1st, so yes I’ve already started, with a door wreath and a couple of mini pumpkins!

If you’re stuck for ideas or don’t want to splash out on decorations to only use them this year then there are some great DIY ideas on Pinterest, here are a few of my favourites.

Spiders Web

Use string, a balloon and PVA to create the web then add a few plastic spiders.

Pumpkins

There are some AMAZING patterns and templates online to create a very professional looking pumpkin.

If you are keen for the younger ones to get involved, and they want to do more than just scoop the insides out then why not let them decorate a pumpkin with paints or pens?

If art is not your thing then there are some very on trend pumpkin stickers available. You could paint the pumpkins with chalk paint first before adding the stickers if you want to match to your decor.

Remember the rainbow windows during lockdown? We loved spotting them on our walks around our local area. Halloween themed windows will help your house look suitably haunted and will also bring a bit of seasonal magic to other families passing by.

Th example above uses tissue paper but you can use poster paint or just get the kids to draw a picture a pop it up. Not an artist? Then adding a window vinyl will get the same results in a second.

Halloween Cinema

Create a Halloween at home cinema experience. You could all be in fancy dress and enjoy some spooky snacks whilst watching something gruesome.

Family film options include:

• Hotel Transylvania
• Casper
• The Addams Family
• The Witches
• Hocus Pocus
• Monster House
• Coraline
• The Corpse Bride
• Gremlins
• Ghost Busters

But nothing stops us parents continuing after the kids go to bed, what better film to watch than Halloween?

Eat, Drink & Be Scary!

My boys love a ‘party tea’. Even without friends over it just feels a bit special for them if it’s buffet style or themed! You can easily adapt some recipes to make them fit the Halloween theme, it doesn’t need to just be sweets either, there’s plenty of healthier options or just spook up their usual meal.

We had spooky sausages and monster mash for Eli’s birthday tea last year. I just used food colouring to make the mash green and added a few little plastic spiders for effect – just remember to remove them before they tuck in!

Here’s some ideas for a monster munch…

• Bloody finger hot dogs
• Halloween shaped biscuits
• Popcorn Witches hands
• Halloween Mummy dogs
• Banana ghosts & satsuma pumpkins

Trick or Treat

If you do still wish to go trick or treating, there are some ways in which to reduce risk including:

• Arranging with friends/family to visit them e.g. classmates who are already in your “bubble” therefore reducing new contacts.
• Stick to the ‘rule of 6’
• Adults could wear a facemask (disposable ones could easily be decorated)
• Don’t encourage sharing of Halloween props/accessories etc.
• Leave a bowl of individually wrapped sweets outside therefore no touching of the doorbell/door is required.
• Use lots of alcohol gel as you go, and reinforce handwashing as soon as you get home.
• Respect other people’s concerns regarding covid safety and only go to houses you know will be participating.

Whatever you decide to do, have fun and enjoy!

If you’ve enjoyed this post, I’ve created a Pinterest board full of ideas that caught my eye for you to explore. Make sure you share your photos to our Facebook group. There might be a prize in it for the most creative!

Images for this post were pulled from Pinterest, no specific credit could be found.