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Our favorite family Halloween tradition happens starting in the spring. We start growing our pumpkins! We tend and take care of them all growing season and just about the time Halloween is here we harvest our pumpkins, display them on the porch in the red wagon and the night before Halloween we carve them all into jack-o-lanterns! The kids love to see their hard work pay off into lots of fun pumpkins! We also grow different types that can not be bought anywhere so their jack-o-lanterns are unique 🙂
O those wonderful grands who came to my door with all their school goblins every Halloween. I would also call out to the adults passing by to come & get candy. One couple was new to our neighborhood and could not understand English. I walked to them with bowl in hand and they smiled and we used our own language and they accepted my treats. PTL
Halloween is my favorite of all the holidays!! A tradition that I keep every year is to decorate my porch with my vintage paper ghost, witch and skeleton, carve out a a fat jack-o-lantern, add lots of pumpkin votives along the sidewalk up to the porch, and hang paper bats from the porch lentil and branches that hang over the sidewalk. Then I dress up like a witch or a pumpkin and hand out candy. Trick or Treat!
Candy corn is my all time favorite! Those orange and yellow candies are one of my many favorite things I love about fall.
One tradition I have had my whole life is to eat chili and glazed donuts on Halloween! It’s not the healthiest combination but that’s what we eat and Halloween just wouldn’t be the same without it. Once I had my own place I began decorating with corn stalks, pumpkins, and straw bales. Every year I put the same decorations up in the same spot. It’s become my own little tradition.
Halloween traditions include serving pumpkin pie and hot apple cider or coffee to the adults and popcorn and hot chocolate to the trick or treaters. My mom started doing this at our house when we were kids, Aunts and Uncles would come to our house and we cousins would go out trick or treating by ourselves, no less, eager to get back home where we could eat some of our candy and sit around a campfire to listen to all the stories told by the adults of past Halloween pranks and activities. There was always a new story to be heard and enjoyed and laughed about. We still do this when we can, our families are spread out and don’t live so close together but my siblings and I invite our friends to our own homes and continue the tradition of camp fires and story telling.
We had our nieces & nephews over to trick or treat with us, and afterwards would watch It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown while sorting out the goodies!
my favorite Halloween tradition is to decorate with wonderful things for the children & adults to enjoy. I have made so many over the years, from pumpkins out of wool, mice that I use double stick tape for them along my molding close to the floor, to witches clothing hanging on a clothesline under the mantel, to orange candles that flicker, to ghosts out of fabric, hay, scarecrow, gourds, mums, fall leaves, fall ribbons and it all comes together. I always leave it up for a couple of months. Starting in Sept 1 and takes about one week to finish it all inside and out. Don’t forget the candy purchased to give to all those wonderful kids each Halloween. I just love it and here I am a senior!!! Wow does time fly by. I would be a “HOOT” to win this prize. thank you for all you do. Winnie Jackson
My favorite Halloween tradition is a combination of apple bobbing in a barrel tub of water, making candy apples, and having a bonfire to roast homemade marshmallows for s’mores with dark chocolate as a way to celebrate the autumn harvest season along with homemade old-fashioned apple cider. All these healthy treats–both apple and dark chocolate–keep the doctor away!
My Grandma Taylor used to make homemade popcorn balls for all the kids in my dad’s neighborhood every Halloween when he was a kid and now my dad makes popcorn balls every Halloween for me and my friends (no mater how old we are). It’s always a treat and it has become a Taylor family tradition!
My mother started having little parties for us as small kids. I sewed costumes for my kids. We still keep the tradition of hot spiced apple cider!
I decorate with all the normal pumpkins,Indian corn,wreaths,leaves,gourds and more. However, for years I have made cloth stuffed and decorated pumpkins and given them to random people. I put a tag on that says, Be Blessed and Be a Blessing. Many let me know when they have put them out as they decorate each year.
As a child I always enjoyed after trick or treating when my brothers and sisters and I would gather in a circle on the living room floor, still in our costumes, dump out our ‘loot’ , and trade each other for our favorite treats!!
Every year, starting when my kids were about 5 and 7 (they’re 23 and 25 now), we would bring the lighted Jack ‘o Lantern into the house after the trick-or-treaters were gone, turn all the other lights out, and listen to Suspense’s 1945 radio play “House in Cypress Canyon”. Grown and with their own lives now, they still listen annually, and my son insists it still gives him the shivers.
Every year we carve pumpkins and watch The Raven. 🙂
When I was a kid we never went trick or treating, We always would go to a church down the road. Every Halloween they have a event that they call “Hallelujah Night”. We played games and collected candy, bounced in the bouncy house, and rode the hay ride:) it was like a big fall festival.
Every year I spend my Halloween with my children and grandchildren.We all get dressed up carve pumpkins and go out trick or treating.
A new tradition since the granddaughters were born, is to take a trip to the local pumpkin farm to choose their very own. The owners have a small corn maze, games and animals to pet after the hunt is complete. Small town life that’s replicated all over America.
My hubby’s family makes sloppy joes and watch Young Frankinstein . Then they take all the grandchildren, nieces, nephews cousins trick or treating.
As a child I love sweet tarts, but as an adult chocolate, especially very dark, is my sweet-treat go-to choice!
Would so love to give my sweet children at Halloween something more good for them.
When I was little every year my mom would throw a Halloween party for the neighborhood. We would spend the week before preparing by carving and painting pumpkins, decorating trees with hanging lanterns, spiders and cobwebs. We would go to an orchard and pick Apple’s for caramel apples and Apple bobbing. And then my favorite.. we would make our own costumes, my mom couldn’t sew so we were very creative with wire and duct tape. Now as an adult, I have no children but seven nieces and nephews and we make caramel apples and carve pumpkins together. I never thought I could get seven kids together age range 12-21 and carve pumpkins and make caramel apples together for hours. I guess you are never too old to enjoy pumpkin carving!
My favorite thing to do is to decorate my front yard. We dont get any trick or treaters but i still love to decorate for the neighbors to see.
When my kids were small, we lived in a very rural area where there weren’t a lot of homes to get trick or treating to but they, of course, wanted candy. I started doing scavenger hunts for them. They had to use a flashlight. Some years they even did it in the snow.
We make candy apples!
It has always been a tradition to go to a pumpkin patch and buy several pumpkins that my children pick out. We can’t go without a little candy corn. Love to decorate the house and porch.
Being a new mother a few years back and only eating ORGANIC I came up with a tradition that would get us through the tough time of all that candy. So far I’ve been able to make it fun enough to work these last few years! After the candy’s all collected, fun had, said candy is turned over to dad who is happy to eat non-organic junk stuff, and the children go on a search in the house for their “candy bag” that mama has hidden and stuffed with organic candy treats from our local chocolate shop/candy store!
Second would be reminiscing about all those cool homemade costumes of old! <3
Ah, Halloween… in my family, it’s always been a special time. We carry on with the “old” traditions — bobbing for apples, pin the let on the skeleton, homemade candies and treats, homemade costumes — as the next generation has begun to have families of their own, it’s so wonderful to see them carrying on what they’ve learned. Makes it a very satisfying bit of continuity…thanks for asking!
My daughter Marcy and I would gather all my grandchildren up.In the costume I would make for them and go all over the neighborhood until I would drop we had so much fun.I would decorate the house and yard with homemade decorations .They are taking their children now. Where does the time go? It seems to fly by.I love to see all the little ones in costumes so cute. Coming to my door So many memories
My favorite is the excitement in the eyes of children when they put on their costume! It’s their day to pretend to be someone else. I’m a teacher and you can see and feel their excitement! Fun!
We don’t celebrate Halloween – but we have another fun family tradition in lieu of it. On November 1st we have our self-proclaimed backwards day! We dress backwards, have say good night first thing in the morning, eat supper for breakfast etc. And, of course, eat candy 🙂
Just moved to small urban farm in Washington State-continuing the tradition of growing our own pumpkins for cooking and decoration- We’re having a bigger harvest this year-it’s exciting!!! Creating new memories in our new home!
I grew up in a rural community. We would get in the back of a pickup or on a hay ride and drive about 10 miles visiting homes in our neighborhood. My 3 brothers and I would always each come home with a paper grocery sac full of candy, fruits, peanuts, and lots of goodies! We always carved pumpkins and put candles inside.
Love to see all the children dressed up for Halloween!
My brothers & I would dumped out all the candy and sort it out!
Then……
My Father would take all our gum and lollipops to work!
OK
you never know if it’s going to be sweaty or icy where we live on Halloween, in our small town in Kansas but we trick or treat all over town, all night long, just like ol days 🙂
My favorite tradition was getting together costumes for my kids to wear to the church Fall Festival. A puppy costume made from a zippered sweat shirt with ears sewn on, a lamb suit made from an old coat’s imitation shearling lining, and a mermaid outfit of my own design are among my most memorable!
my fav. is the popcorn balls Mildred (our neighbor and friend in Harpster Idaho) would make to pass out to us trick or treaters. They were so yummy. We have tried and tried but no one can make a popcorn ball like Mildred. She also made carmel corn to die for! Miss you Mildred!
Every halloween I make a big pot of homemade chicken soup!! When trick or treat is over…its so good to come home to a steamy bowl of soup!! Makes house smell awesome too!!!
Like to get together with the family and have chili and cornbread and some type apple and or pumpkin desert. Also, cider and hot chocolate. Since we are rural the children visit our rural neighbors to trick or treat.
Love to see the little kids come by — so excited. Also great when it is their older sibling taking them around & they are so careful of the younger ones.
Carving pumpkins with my Grandson.
My mother had the best recipe for caramel popcorn balls; loaded with caramel, but just enough that they weren’t too sticky to form into balls and wrap in plastic wrap. I’ve never tasted anything like them since; deep, dark, buttery caramel. It was a family project at Halloween.
Nothing says it’s Halloween like caramel and red hot candy apples. Making them is half the fun and turning them upside down on wax paper to cool. Better have some good teeth for the first bite, and then the succulent apple awaits underneath. Still a favorite of mine!
Leeza Perry
Ohio New Subscriber 2016
Growing and car in the pumpkins is my favorite tradition. Each year I start early and grow the largest pumpking I can manage for each of my grandchildren. They watch them all summer then just before haloween they get to take them home and carve away. Most years there are enough for the grandkids an their friends.
Our favority Halloween tradition is going to the local apple farm. Once I get my first bag (and quart of cider), it’s time to put out the decorations!
My favorite Halloween tradition is hanging my recycled milk jug skeleton out in a spooky display on my front porch each year. I also enjoy taking up those fallen leaves into white trash bags and creating cute little ghosts and goblins with them!
Our favorite family Halloween tradition was for our son to dress up in his costume and go out to eat. He was always a hit at the restaurant for the employees who were having to work the holiday.
sewing costumes
Trick or treating with the kids