Halloween is a wonderful holiday filled with some very quick and funny memories for me.
I grew up just outside of Pittsburgh so when it came to Trick-or-Treating, it was always cold! I think my mom always trying to get heavy winter jackets over or under our costumes to make sure we were strong and competing against our friends to see exactly how many houses we could get to in those very short two hours.
Back then (not all that long ago mind you!), you would go to a neighbor`s house and there would be fresh, homemade treats, a lot of laugh and smiles and of course many camera flashes going off to keep the moment.
Today, Trick-or-Treating isn`t always so friendly and safe, so I thinking I would share how my community has come up with a way to reach it safer and truly come together to have some very special memories for the kids in our neighborhood.
Here are about ideas to establish this a Halloween to think by making traditional Trick-or-Treating into an effect that brings your community, street or neighborhood together.
Safety Comes First An easy way to do it safe is by getting some neighbors to offer to be blocking or intersection captains. These folks can offer to facilitate take the trick-or-treaters to the correct homes or areas and be on alarm for anything or group that may be dangerous. Your neighborhood watch is a right home to start, but if you do not take an active neighborhood watch, try getting some parents or other neighbors to offer their time.
We possess four main streets in our region and there is trick-or-treating on all of them; however, we try to concentrate the principal elements of the evening in one field of the community. These safety volunteers help maintain an eye on the less busy streets and homes.
Souvenir PhotosOne of the unique things that we do is take souvenir photos of the kids all dolled up in their costumes (and much the parents too!). This has likely been the mostappreciated an enjoyed traditions we have added.
We set up a background for the photos. Sometimes it is a spooky theme and sometimes it is funny. However, regardless of the subject it helps to set the feel for the event. You can clean up some hay bales and some spooky dcor for the background from your pet Home Depot. I use Pine straw bales instead of hay because I can use them as mulch in the garden the next weekend. Remember, the backdrop doesn`t get to be excessive because the genius of the picture should be the trick-or-treaters.
Set up a tripod and a decent digital camera and you are set to begin saving the memories on the night. You leave not consider how simple and fun this project turns out to be. You will see some of the silliest poses and costumes and it gets to be still more fun when the solid family gets involved. I receive people assure me every class that they are so thrilled to make the memories captured. We have been doing this for 5 days now and it is awful to see how all of the neighborhood kids have grown.
Once the evening is over, you can download the pictures from your camera and upload them to a photo-sharing site for the parents to download their children`s photos. You can still add some extras by loading the photos into your favorite photo-editing software and adding your neighborhood or street name or HOA logo to the photos.
Graveyard of TreatsAfter they get their photos taken, we let the kids go through the spooky graveyard to clean their own treat bags. A fun and spooky graveyard of treats is a large way to add some fun to Trick-or-Treating.
Now you can do these two different ways. You can pool together candy from several homes and prepare treat bags for all of the kids instead of them going door-to-door or you can make the address bags on your own or with your HOA`s help as an added "special" treat for the kids. If you pool together the treats in place of going door-to-door, be trusted to get much of activities and games for the kids to enjoy.
These treat bags or containers can have work in a bit of ways. You can use simple brown (recycled) lunch bags, cellophane bags. You can do them up different ways with printable labelsorcolored ribbons and glitter.
I choose to make the treat bags with a smattering of volunteers from the HOA. This lets the kids enjoy going door-to-doorwhile still getting a really special treat. You can see what goes into the bags so you can realize the bags full of healthy treats if you need to annul the carbohydrate or mix in some good chocolatey, sugary stuff.
Just before the kids go to visit, set out the treat bags or containers throughout an area on the lawn with tombstones and other silly creatures. Caution tape adds to the secret and helps to keep your graveyard of treats contained, and helps to stop the kids from entering any garden or unsafe areas.
Halloween Movie TheaterAs the evening wears on, the short ones go to get tired but the bigger kids still need to prevent going. We setup an outdoor Halloween Movie Theater. We draw out the projector and laptop and show Halloween TV specials or Halloween movies appropriate for all of the children. Before the inflatable movie screen came to the Home Depot, we would use Canvas stretched between two 4x4s as a movie screen. This class will be the outset for the inflatable movie screen. (Be measured with this one. If it is too cold or damp, it is not good to take electronic equipment outside. It was too dull for us to do this last class and a list of the kids missed it.)
Haunted Yards and Homes We take a few neighbors on the street that create haunted yards and one neighbor who creates a haunted garage! Many neighbors already get into the holiday already, so it is comfortable to set the picture by having neighbors add Halloween dcor throughout the neighborhood. You can get some great new inflatables and other yard dcor at homedepot.com of course! We have prizes for the best decorated homes in the region which helps to get more neighbors involved.
Adult Treat Bags It`s not only around the kids, right? We put together an adult treat bag for the moms and dads! Local businesses often share special coupons or samples and other goodies. The coupons or special deals are usually helpful for our families` budgets and the businesses get customers out of the deal. We still give one local business that bakes special treats just for the parents.
This is something that we added a pair of days ago and it really helps to get the business community in to keep our families.
RefreshmentsMmmm_you can`t leave the refreshments! It really helps the moms and dads get done the dark by having some delicious hot chocolate and hot chocolate available. We usually have sugar free drinks and water for the kids as well. You actually don`t want a whole lot of fancy refreshments, especially with all of the glaze and treats abound.
Don`t forget to have charge of your safety volunteers with refreshments and treat bags!
These are approximately of things that we do as a community, but you don`t get to do all of these things to do this night a particular night. If you love any of these ideas and believe they can work on your street, choose one or two to add to your Halloween celebration or add all of them!
It is astonishing how with only a small sweat and some assistance from your neighbors how special you can get this evening. It`s simply tremendous to see the laugh and joy echoing through the streets.
Let our readers and me know how you make Halloween special by sharing your ideas for a good and wonderful night of magic!
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