July 4th has passed and if you’re anything like me, July 5th marks the beginning of all things Halloween. I absolutely love Halloween activities and having little kids to enjoy it with is all for the better. It’s the ultimate holiday full of fun, laughter, and creativity (as well as treats!) and I love to maximize every moment to get as many tricks and treats out of the Halloween season as I can.
This week, I was going through all my photos over the last few years and got inspired to make a post about my favorite Halloween activities and traditions we do as a family… from fall outdoor experiences that get us in the Halloween mood to how we decorate our Halloween tablescape to the crazy crafts we love to make!
I’ve compiled a list of my top faves we typically try to enjoy each year to help kick off your Halloween season! Enjoy and happy haunting!
01 | Take the Family to a Corn Maze
This has got to be an all-time favorite tradition for me since the kids were babies. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we have countless farms and corn mazes and they’re the perfect way to start off the season. Typically opening in late September or early October, these are fun to visit right away while the weather is still warm, sunset is later, and before we start cramming in all the other holiday parties and school festivities.
Brayden’s birthday falls in the middle of October and this year we’re actually having his birthday party at a corn maze (he’s turning 8… where did the time go?!). We’ll be putting together a Family-Friendly Haunted Scavenger Hunt for the kids to enjoy as they run around the corn maze. If you have littles with fall birthdays, this is something to consider!
Fun fact: did you know the first full-size corn mazes weren’t created until the 1990’s? It is believed the first one was made in Pennsylvania in 1993 as a means for the farm to get extra income from the tourists.
Our favorite corn maze we visit is Bob’s Corn & Pumpkin Farm. If you have anything similar near you, I’d highly recommend you go. I love that they have several fall activities to enjoy so making the trek out there is absolutely worth it.
Tips for a good corn maze experience:
- Read the corn maze reviews and look beyond overall enjoyment: look for comments about the muddiness and health of the corn stocks.
- Look up the length of time it takes to complete and how easy it is to get out if needed.
- Wear rain boots or shoes that can get muddy, even if the weather is great. Often the walkways are slippery.
- Dress warmly and rock those plaid flannels for fun fall photos along the way!
- Bring snacks and water. The worst thing is getting halfway through and hearing “Mommy I’m hungry!”
02 | Make Halloween Hotdog Mummies for a Spooky Lunch
These are my kids’ absolute favorite Halloween recipe I make and especially my son, begs me for them every year. They are so fun to eat and super simple to make. The candy eyes keep for years so I keep the leftovers for future projects or for even next Halloween.
All you need are three simple ingredients for this Halloween recipe: hotdogs, crescent roll pastry dough, and candy eyes. While it’s pretty obvious how you make them, I love this recipe review from House of Nash Eats. She’s got some cute images of how to make ketchup and mustard look like a spiderweb too!
03 | Decorate your Dining Table with a Spooky Tablescape
If this doesn’t get you into the Halloween spirit I’m not sure what will!
I invest in a few new pieces or create a few of my own each year to continue building out my Halloween tablescape. I typically start decorating the first week of October so we can enjoy it during our family dinners for the month. The kids especially love adding the spider webs though I will admit, I’m totally that mom who “retouches” it after they go to bed. I’m sorry, I hate clumpy webs!
I actually use quite a few non-seasonal decorations I have throughout the house: white and black vases and decorative pieces. I then added some Halloween-specific decorations like skulls and black pumpkins. I place everything over a black mesh cloth to keep them centered and pulled together.
Look around your house and take inventory. You may have more unsuspecting pieces you can pull together than you realize.
From there, start layering in additional pieces like skulls, spooky potion books, pumpkins, etc. For me, the more candles the better! Etsy has some great handmade candles that don’t feel so commodity and basic. I personally love these black and gold key candles!
My favorite part of my Halloween tablescape though is my black candelabra. It makes for a great centerpiece and I just love the height and dramatics it brings to the dinner experience.
I couldn’t find one that I liked (without spending an arm and a leg) so I opted to buy this Candelabra from amazon for just under $23 and spray painted it black with matte black spray paint.
I think the finished product looks pretty great! This particular candelabra is 10″ tall which is a great height: not so tall it blocks you from seeing people around the table but just tall enough to make a statement. We’ve used it for three years now and the paint hasn’t chipped off one bit.
I love wrapping those spider webs around the five arms to make it really feel spooky!
04 | Make Smores by a Firepit
We’re a camping family so this one comes as a natural obvious must-do to extend our favorite summer tradition (smores) and welcome in the cooler nights and fun fall festivities! We typically make hot dogs, smores, and a lot of apple cider for a night with all the cousins.
My favorite is, of course, renting a firepit at our favorite Bob’s Corn & Pumpkin Farm but we’ve also kept it simple and made smores for the kids with our Sharper Image Smores Maker at home. Either way, a smore is a smore and they are delicious no matter what!
05 | Print out Halloween Activity Sheets on a Rainy Day
I love having these Halloween Activity packets printed out and in my back pocket (figuratively of course) for when a rainy day comes or it’s just one of those nights filled with “I’m bored!”
I made this 31 Halloween Activities Party Pack a few years ago when I started my etsy shop: Kids’ Holiday Activities with printable activity packets for kids and the family to enjoy throughout the holiday seasons.
It’s just $2.99 for the whole pack! All proceeds go straight to my trick-or-treat candy bowl. 😉
The pack has 31 different worksheets for kids pre-K to 3rd grade including classic activities like crosswords, mazes, and Sodoku. I also included some unique activities like Roll a Jack-O-Lantern face and a fun game called Battle of the 9’s.
My favorites though are the Halloween trivia that we enjoy over dinner or the Halloween Mad Libs!
While this is a shameless plug for my 31 Halloween Activities Party Pack, clearly you can make your own or find some free printables on Pinterest!
06 | Go for a Fall Walk (with Hot Coco)
This one is clearly dependent on where you live and your weather situation, but it is one of my favorite (and free) things to do with the family as the days get cooler. We’re fortunate in the Pacific Northwest to have beautiful falls and the colors of the changing leaves are just gorgeous.
Sometimes it can be hard to get the kids off the screens and outside, especially in the fall: it’s colder and they’re tired from getting back into the routine of school. This is exactly why I push for walks before or after dinner at least twice a week. We use it to spend time talking about our “rose and thorn” of the day: a way of expressing what the best part and least favorite part of the day was.
As we get into our routine of fall walks, they do become easier. It becomes extra fun as Halloween decorations start to go up. I suggest putting together a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt for the walks to make it extra fun! The kids like to make them for me and my husband too and we compete to see who can finish theirs first!
07 | Make a Halloween Charcuterie Board
If you’ve gone anywhere near Pinterest during the fall months you’re sure to have stumbled upon a plethora of gorgeous Halloween Charcuterie pins for inspiration! I’ve pinned many, always wanting to actually have a reason to put one together. And while my self-love Sunday is totally worthy of buying $50 of cheese and meat, ha!, I still prefer to share it and all of its beauty with a larger crowd.
Last year was finally my time to shine when we hosted a Halloween get-together for some families in our kids’ classes. It was such a treat having them come over to kick off the Halloween season and gave us the excuse to decorate earlier than normal.
Blakely was so excited to help make her first Charcuterie board and she did a fantastic job laying out all the mini toasts and crackers! We added spider webs and a burnt orange and dark red rose bouquet for extra pizzaz, along with some drooped white mesh cloth we hung across both of our island’s hanging sconces.
We had everything that didn’t need to be freshly laid out about 1.5 hours before our guests arrived and then hustled to get the fresh meats and cheeses out 15 minutes before the party began.
The hit of the night was the baked brie. We used the super cute recipe from The Jam Jar Kitchen where you wrap the brie in strips of puff pastry to mummify it and use blueberries as little eyes. It’s honestly so cute and so easy to make!
Unfortunately, in the rush of everything we forgot to add our brie mummy’s eyes after we pulled him from the oven so it did not warrant a picture being taken. That and half of it was eaten before I even realized! Nonetheless, it was delicious and everyone loved it.
Related: For more Halloween recipe ideas, check out My Best 20 Halloween Recipes
08 | Make a Haunted Graveyard Witch’s Caldron
This. Is. Amazing! And by far the best Halloween project I’ve ever done. It is my absolute pride and joy to bring out each year!
We move it around throughout the Halloween season… sometimes it’s in the backyard and other times it’s on our kitchen island. Halloween night, however, it always makes its public debut in the front yard with the lightup witches (my other favorite decoration)!
I got the step-by-step guide from a wonderful blog, Making Life Lovely, a few years ago and decided to give it a go. You can find it here: How to Make the Ultimate Fire Prop for Halloween.
It took us two days and probably only about 2 hours in total. You can’t tell from the picture below but there are orange lights under the bones so in the dark, it looks like burning embers.
PRO tip: use a string of lights that has dimmers or flashes to make it more dynamic.
It really is so unique and trick-or-treaters love it! Sometimes we put a fog machine inside it which is a cool effect. We’ve even used it as the holder for the trick-or-treat bowl when we all go out for trickery ourselves!
09 | Take a Halloween Themed Painting Class
Taking the kids and their friends to a painting class is so much fun, whether it be for a birthday party or just a weekend activity. I discovered a really cute paint shop in the town next to us that was offering a one-hour class for kids to learn how to paint one of two Halloween pictures on a canvas. So fun and the kids love using their paintings as decorations for their rooms!
Check around at your local art shops and see if they have anything seasonal. It’s a great idea for Christmas as well!
10 | Decorate Halloween Cookies with a Sprinkle Station
This was actually an activity we paired last year with our Halloween Charcuterie party with our family friends from the kids’ school. While we enjoyed our cheese plate, the kids had a blast decorating Halloween cookies with these fun festive Orange and Black Halloween sprinkles (6-pack) and Green and Black Halloween sprinkles (6-pack).
I like to separate out each sprinkle type into bowls and add in some of my white and blue sprinkles I save from Valentine’s Day or the kids’ birthdays to give some added colors. Separating them out in little dishes with spoons lets them all share and minimizes the wait time for the 6 pack sprinkle shaker to make its way around the table.
As I mentioned earlier, Brayden’s birthday is in October so we typically do something fall or Halloween-themed. One year we did a Halloween cookie decorating party. If you’re having a larger gathering (or just love sprinkles), I recommend getting a larger pack of sprinkles so there is plenty to go around. We used these and they were perfect: Halloween Confetti Sprinkles 1.2lbs.
11 | Spend a Day at a Farm
This goes right along with my love for a corn maze or hay ride (minus the allergies) because it gets the kids outside and enjoying the space around them. I love a farm that has some sort of Fall festival for kids!
Activities to look for are carnival games, an apple cannon, kids’ trains to ride, or our favorite, a petty zoo! We live relatively close to a lot of farms that have these but if we want to make a day of it we head south for about 1.5 hours and bump into a few that have milking cows the kids can actually milk!
I love spending a half day at a farm at least once in October. It provides a great opportunity to get some fall photos so I always try to dress the kids in something that screams autumn. Most years have been successful, but others… well you know how it goes, you’re glad you just got them half-dressed and out the door!
This is my favorite picture of Brayden from last year. After a day at the festival, we stopped in at the farm store where they had prepicked pumpkins and all sorts of delicious vegetables grown fresh from the farm. We ended up picking up a few corn husks for dinner and roasted some pumpkin seeds from a pumpkin we had picked!
12 | Make Popcorn Packets for the Neighbors
So these are such a fun and easy craft for the kids to do, and I love that they then hand these out to our neighbors once we’re done!
The first time I made these it was for a snack for the kids and their cousins as they entered a corn maze. The kids loved taking one as they entered the maze and I rested easy knowing they wouldn’t get the munchies while we explored.
Funny story, as I was just about done handing them out to my family I realized I had a few extras. I hollered out “Who didn’t get their popcorn?!” A woman came hurrying over and said “I haven’t!” She had thought I worked at the park and was handing out free snacks. Fortunately, I had made a few extra and was happy to give her one!
Goes to show how cute these are! They looked like official corn maze snacks!
To make: add fresh popcorn to a snack-size zip lock baggie. Don’t fill completely or it will be hard to hide the colored zip top. Roll the baggie up focused on making a cone shape with one of the bottom corners be the point of the corn cob that will show through the “husk.” Tape the baggie at the base so it stays in its cone-like shape.
Then, wrap a green tissue paper around the baggie to form the husk and tie at the bottom with a ribbon.
13 | Throw a Halloween Pumpkin Carving Party
This is a fun family tradition my sister and I enjoyed growing up: having our grandparents come over to help with the pumpkin carving. Now, we get our kids together and have our parents come as well. Typically we all go pumpkin picking together first and then head home to carve but other times we’ve just all brought our own pumpkins.
Tip: I purchased a black plastic table cloth roll (40″x100′) a couple years back and use it to roll out and tape to the floor as a cover (see below). It does just the trick! It is great for the kids to walk around on and makes my cleanup super easy!
The roll is honestly genius and has been used for many an art project! Use it for your Halloween cookie decorating party too!
14 | Take Halloween and Fall-Themed Photos
It’s the mark of a good time if you look back at your photos and realize you didn’t get any. I have far too many parties or fun activities we’ve done where I realized I was so busy enjoying it that I forgot to snap a photo. Looking back at the pictures for this post made me realize I had memories of things I wanted to share but hadn’t actually captured it on camera.
I’m trying to be better about being intentional with my time and for that very reason, I miss many opportunities to grab that perfect shot.
My solution? Schedule it in.
It can be as simple as having the kids dress up in their costumes or putting on a witch hat and standing out by their pumpkins on the front porch the next morning. The ones below are some of my favorites: the kids weren’t distracted or annoyed by me interrupting them to take a picture and I had a moment to actually make sure I got a good shot without feeling like I was focusing too much on my phone and not the party.
One of my favorite fall pictures of Blakely was super spontaneous but it’s something you could actually plan for. She happened to be wearing this adorable fall outfit (so perfect with her hair right?) when we made a quick stop at the grocery store. They had just put out all their gourdes and pumpkins and did a really cute job of displaying them with some hay stacks and corn husks.
The colors were so beautiful as I watched her looking at the pumpkins so I took a few quick shots.
It occurred to me that this would be an easy and convenient backdrop for fall photos! If you don’t have farms near you or simply don’t have the time, take a look around your neighborhood grocery stores to find one that doesn’t just pile the pumpkins up in huge boxes.
15 | Host a Halloween Dinner Party
Last but certainly not least, plan a Halloween dinner party. Whether it’s with friends, extended family, the neighbors, or just for you and the kids, it’s a fun tradition to do every year!
I love to host these for our extended family. It started during the pandemic; I wanted to do something extra special for the kids because hello… it was a tough year, and trick or treating was just becoming something they were into but unfortunately, grabbing candy out of bowls from a bunch of people just wasn’t on the ticket that year.
I’ve talked about making a spooky Halloween tablescape which is so fun to enjoy for dinner. We dim the lights, light the candles, and turn on a Halloween playlist to set the ambiance.
I typically make tomato soup and yummy dark dinner rolls to start. I serve these in my Staub Pumpkin Cocettes which are my absolutely favorite! You can find these at HSN for $24.99 a piece. I was fortunate enough to work at a sister brand to HSN and got a lovely discount on them.
You can find similar pumpkin ramekins on Amazon for around $20 each, but they often have a 20% off coupon available.
I try to make the dishes spooky and festive to keep the dinner extra special. I have a list of my favorite Halloween recipes to give you some inspiration here: The Best 20 Halloween Recipes.
