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October 31 marks Halloween - complete with candy, costumes and a bit of spookiness. While the annual celebration is all about fun, there’s always room to add some meaning. Here at Goodnet, we have come up with five ways to insert a bit of good doing into the festivities, and perhaps even create some new traditions along the way. Feel free to share some of your own Halloween traditions with us in the comments below. Trick-or-treat!
THE NIGHT OF: START A NEW TRADITION
Halloween is an exciting night filled with trick-or-treating and fun costume parties, but it can also serve as a good time to spend some quality time with your loved ones. A pre-Halloween meal with healthy fixings can become a great new tradition to kick off the revelry. Eating nutritious foodstuffs before heading out for the night will fill you up and leave less room for sugary candy. Check out 9 healthy meals ready in under 30 minutes if you need some recipe inspiration.
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COSTUMES: GO DIY
Dressing up is what makes Halloween so fun - for kids and adults alike. Your creativity can run wild and you can be whomever you want – the sky’s the limit. But instead of going out and buying a costume that you’ll wear for a couple of hours once a year, make one yourself! Most costume elements can be found at home or even borrowed from friends.
For some great DIY kid’s costumes explore Real Simple, Handmade Charlotte and Parenting. If you’d like to buck the trend, try dressing your kid up as a historical figure and explain to them the significance of that person.
For the adults out there, you are not forgotten! Here are some cool and culturally relevant DIY costumes from Buzzfeed, Babble and the daily green.
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PUMPKINS: MORE THAN JUST A JACK-O-LANTERN
Carving pumpkins is a great Halloween activity; there are so many inventive ways to create a jack-o-lantern. Plus, it’s always nice to display your beautiful handiwork for the whole neighborhood to see. While you’re carving your pumpkin, instead of just chucking out the insides, put them to good use! There are many tasty ways to use all of the pumpkin like roasting the seeds, making tasty pumpkin butter or even using the insides of the pumpkin to make yummy pumpkin muffins.
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TRICK-OR-TREATING: HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES TO SWEETS
As soon as dusk hits, the streets become filled with costumed kids knocking door-to-door with an open bag chanting trick-or treat! While Halloween is synonymous with sweet, it usually doesn’t equal healthy. This year try an alternative to sugary sweets by offering fresh mandarin oranges, granola bars or sugar-free gum. If you want to step away from candy, fill kids’ trick-or-treat bags with fun doodads like stickers, whistles, bouncy balls or spider rings.
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THE DAY AFTER: NEIGHBORHOOD CLEAN UP
Trick or treating brings the whole neighborhood out and is a fun affair for all. But a night of trick-or-treating also makes for a lot of mess, with discarded candy wrappers and abandoned costumes littering the ground. Start a new tradition by rallying friends and family to clean up the ‘hood after Halloween by picking up garbage from the night before.
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