Can’t wait until Halloween?
“It’s almost Halloween, mom!” my almost-seven-year-old just told me, again, for the tenth time or so today. She cannot wait for our favorite holiday, and can you blame her? Not only is it the most fun of the year—it’s also one of the earliest promoted holidays. Right now, every store has Halloween displays going up a month early; even the Halloween Spirit stores are starting to open up where we live. We bought our daughter a light-up ink pen at one two weeks ago!
Of course, she was terrified of the inside of the building itself, which was no surprise. I was too scared of anything beyond spiders when I was her age as well—though now all I wanted to do was walk around the whole store and try out every display. (What the heck is with all the zombie babies this year, by the way? Does anybody get that?)
You don’t have to wait until Halloween to start having fun, though! Here are some fun things you can do right now.
- Scare the kids on the school bus! A homeschooling family I know has one little girl going to school, so they all decided to do Halloween this week and scare the kids on the bus when they dropped her off. The other six children dressed up and came outside in all of their garb. I am still giggling over the thought.
- Practice with your makeup and costumes. Maybe you don’t have a place to wear them just yet—of course, who said you couldn’t wear them to the supermarket?—but you need to get your look down before October, right? That’s a perfect excuse to start dressing up now.
- Decorate your house little by little. I can’t stand having things decorated way too early for a whole month, but I like a peek here and there. So we’ve put up a creepy door knocker this week, and last week it was a plastic human hand hanging from the trunk of our car.
- Start doing household decorating, like a pumpkin tablecloth or washcloths. This will give you a bit of that Halloween spirit without overwhelming you right away.
- Have a Halloween movie marathon in which you watch your favorites, from Gremlins to The Nightmare Before Christmas. My daughter’s pushing for Coraline, but I still don’t feel like she’s old enough yet. Jack and Sally I’ll still let her watch, of course; it’s one of her favorites.