Halloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid. I used to be the one who would
carve the pumpkins, create witches and decorations out of construction paper and even
make paper towel ghosts to hang from the trees. There was something about Halloween
that I loved. It could have been anything from the costumes to the candy or even the
movies about magic and fairytales that made me fall in love with this holiday and never
grow out of wanting to celebrate it. If your kids love Halloween and you need something
for them to do, here are three inexpensive activities that you can have them to which will
keep them busy, create decorations for your house and get everyone ready for Halloween.
Zombigami was something I randomly found when I was looking at Amazon for
Halloween party supplies. Zombigami is like your ordinary origami, but instead of
making birds and flowers you make movie monsters and graveyards. What I love about
this is that you can have your kids learn how to follow instructions and create cool little
zombies and cemeteries. Then when they have finished creating their scenes, you can
get them a cheap video camera and give them a place to make a short Halloween movie.
Zombigami is great because you can get the book for about $3 by clicking this link and
then your kids will have fun for hours creating monsters and making movies or just
playing with the characters they made.
A floating family of ghosts.
One thing that I loved about Halloween was decorating my yard. Instead of putting
everything in front of people, I would climb on the roof, up high in trees and place
everything just out of eye sight so that you could only see things out of the corner of
your eye and when you did, you would then look around and start to notice everything.
It was a really cool way to help turn a normal yard into a paranormal gathering. One of
the things I loved were papertowel ghosts. However, anyone can stuff a paper towel into
another and tie a piece of string around it to make a ghost. If you want to do something
more unique this Halloween, try taping papertowels together to form a larger sheet and
draw on a face. Then buy a large latex balloon and smaller balloons and a party sized
helium tank from a party store like this one. The last thing you’ll need are weights,
stakes or sticks and string so you can hold the ghosts in place. You can even have
someone wear a wicked witch costume and lead the ghosts to make it even more lifelike.
Take your large paper towel or you could even use a light weight cloth and cover the
larger balloon filled with helium. Now tie on the string about 3 or 4 feet long. Then add
a weight to the bottom or a steak so you can stick it in the ground. Now take as many
other balloons as you want and fill them up then cover them with the taped together paper
towels so that you can have a family of ghosts that float. Tie them all with different
lengths of string and have them follow the larger ghost in a line in your yard. Now tie
each one down with a stake or a weight and watch as your Mommy ghost waves around
in the wind while her kids follow in line.
Tombstones and zombies
One fun craft to do is to create zombies coming out of the ground to attack the trick or
treaters. To do this you can either cut out tombstones from sheets of wood that you can
buy at a lumber yard or hardware store. Then paint on the sayings or initials of your
family members. Now go to your local Halloween store and buy hands attached to arms
and see if they sell Styrofoam mannequin heads. Take the mannequin heads and cover
them with normal make up and face concealer to make them have skin toned flesh. Now
take nail polish and burn away or melt parts of the faces and heads. You can then pour in
fake blood and put cheap wigs on them. Now bury them with the head coming out of the
ground in front of the tombstone and also bury the top parts of the arms so the hands are
coming out of the ground and it looks like the zombies are climbing out of your yard.
Halloween can be fun and you can get your kids to fall in love with it by having them
help with decorating your house. You can easily create a living zombie graveyard, a
family of ghosts and even your own Halloween movies.
About the author:
Mary is a do it yourself diva who loves everything from sharing recipes and designer
aprons to great deals on clothing like
kids pajamas.
