As parents, most of us spend our time preparing for Halloween by finding costumes for the kiddos, watching YouTube makeup tutorials for the kiddos, buying candy for the kiddos, going to trunk-or-treats and trick-or-treating through the neighborhood for the kiddos and then finding ways to bribe our kids to not eat all the candy they just acquired.
It’s no surprise that kids love Halloween! But there are many ways that grown-ups can still enjoy Halloween as well, and not just vicariously through their children.
1. Get yourself a costume!
Whether you make it, buy it, borrow it or put random things together from your closet, you will get into the Halloween spirit much more if you dress up! There are loads of ideas on the Net to help inspire you. And if you still think this holiday should just be all about the kids, wait until you see how excited your kids are when they see you dressed in a costume.
2. Enjoy the treats
You may have a more sophisticated palate and/or diet than you did as a kid, when you ate your Halloween candy indiscriminately until you finally had to be rolled off to bed. While you’re stocking up on bags of candy or pencils and bubbles (depending on what kind of parent you are this season), grab yourself a treat you will enjoy as well. This will help you savor the calories you’re eating much more than you might with the chewy, unnaturally colored items you will likely find in your kids’ candy buckets. My motto is: If it’s gonna make you fat, it better be worth it.
3. Have a costume party at your house for grown-ups
Kids can come too, if you’d like, or you can make it adults only. Adults tend to come up with some pretty awesome costumes when prizes, street cred or bragging rights are on the line.
4. Plan an adult Halloween outing
If you don’t necessarily want to have a party at your house, meet your friends at a haunted house, or do a cemetery tour. I’m a scaredy-cat, but it is fun to get your adrenaline going once in a while with a good scare, and so much better with a large group of friends. Just try not to be the first or last one in line. There’s safety in numbers, folks!
5. Do some crafting
Have you seen the insane number of cute Halloween crafts that exist? Have a girl’s or couple’s craft night and make some delightfully spooky decorations for your home or as gifts. Why buy that Halloween wreath that’s 50 percent off at your favorite craft store when you can make one for twice the fun, three times the cost, and 10 times more time than it would take to buy it? Time spent crafting with friends is priceless. You can even set up a kid’s crafting station if you want to clean that mess up later. Their smiles might just make the mess worth it.
6. Look for a trunk-or-treat
If you want to decorate for Halloween but are short on time or money, find a trunk-or-treat in your area that you can attend. Whoever came up with trunk-or-treat is a genius. You walk around a parking lot full of cars that have trunks loaded with candy. There’s no wondering if someone’s home or not, there’s no walking street after street to get a decent amount of candy, there are often prizes for best decorated trunk and you’ll most likely find stray candy in your car for months to come that you can shove in your mouth when the kids aren’t looking. Win, win.
7. Host a Murder Mystery Masquerade Dinner at your house
Just writing that makes me want to have one. You can do it potluck style to make it a little more manageable, because you know you’ll be cleaning right up until you open the door for your first guest. Ain’t nobody got time to also make enough dinner to feed all those people. Just beware of the butler…
8. Make a Haunted House
When I was in middle school, my best friend’s parents set up a crazy elaborate haunted house of sorts. Halloween was their favorite holiday and they were the first adults I knew who really got into the Halloween spirit. They had scarier things in place for adults who wanted them, such as scary movies playing in designated rooms. But for everyone to enjoy, they had a gross table, where the mom displayed foods she had made that were meant to be touched, not eaten. Noodles that looked and felt like intestines, shrunken heads made out of who knows what, eyeballs (maybe canned lychees), etc. All of these things entertained the kids all night long, and the adults couldn’t resist touching them at least once and enjoyed hanging out while the kids were entertained. There were also festive finger foods that could be eaten, because getting scared can work up an appetite.
9. Host a costume photo session
You know that either you or a close friend of yours is an amateur photographer. Who isn’t these days? Focus your Halloween decorating to one spot as a backdrop for your photos. This can be just for adults or whole families. Take multiple pictures in multiple poses. Bonus, you can use these pictures to make a “magazine” or calendar or some other photo gift that can be given at Christmas or birthdays throughout the year.
10. Do a family-themed Halloween costume idea
Our friends dressed their whole family up as different cast members from Napoleon Dynamite. Their family had so much fun and their costumes were pretty easy to put together and yet epic in impact. Other friends dressed as cast members from Austin Powers and then took pics they used as their family Christmas picture. What a fun way to create family unity and knock out your family pictures in one fell swoop!
Do you have some great ideas on how to help adults enjoy Halloween even more? We’d love to hear about them. Comment below! And if you need a little more help getting into the Halloween spirit, check out our parody of Elle King’s “Ex’s and Oh’s” called “Monsters and Ghosts.”
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