It’s the spookiest time of the year! Whether you’re hosting a Halloween party, setting up scary movie marathon or trick-or-treating with the kids, there’s nothing quite like a creepy celebration on 31st October.
Here are our top tips to get your home Halloween ready, without a fuss…
- Decorate with easy clean-up in mind
A few simple decorations can ramp up the spooky atmosphere inside and outside of your home. But with all that fake blood, how do you avoid your home becoming a house of horrors?
- Avoid messy fake blood and gore, sticky spray-on cobwebs and real candles, which could drip wax onto your furniture, stain surfaces or leave marks.
- Instead opt for recyclable paper decorations, cotton wool cobwebs and LED candles that flicker just like the real deal – making DIY decorations can double as a fun family activity to ramp up excitement before the big day.
- Having a daytime do? No problem. Bin bags over the inside of windows will instantly turn any room dark as midnight.
- If you’re a Halloween devotee, you could even invest in porcelain pumpkins and permanent decorations that you can bring out year after year!
- Turn your house into a haunted mansion
Need some fun activities for kids to do with their friends, or simply to entertain yourself? Make the most of your home with hidden games and activities made from household objects.
- Try creating a spooky scavenger hunt with creepy clues planted all around your home – bonus points for giving the hints a Halloween theme!
- For younger kids, take an orange ball or balloon, decorate it to look like a pumpkin, then challenge them to get it across the room without using their hands, or see how many they can throw into a decorated box.
- If you have a garden, traditional fairground games can all be given a spooky twist with a little imagination – use witches hats as ring toss targets or pumpkins to make a creepy coconut shy.
- Prepare for trick or treaters
The tradition of “trick or treating” can be traced all the way back to medieval times, when ancient Celts disguised themselves as ghosts to blend in with the spirits which they believed roamed the land of the living during the festival of Samhain.
By Victorian times, children were performing songs and jokes on the doorstep in return for treats. In the 1920s, trick or treaters started pulling pranks on their communities, leading to the introduction of more wholesome activities such as parades, family parties and the friendlier trick or treating we know today.
Wondering how to prepare for trick or treaters this year?
- Stock up on individually wrapped sweets, lollies and chocolate treats to give out – you don’t want to run out!
- Placing a jack-o-lantern outside your home or decorating your front door can signify to parents that you’re happy for them to knock
- Ensure your garden or the path to your door is well lit so nobody stumbles after dark
- Make sure pets are kept away from the door so you can easily answer as many times as needed without worrying about escapees
- Want to get into the spirit of things? Wearing a Halloween costume to answer the door is sure to raise a smile from little ones!
