“A Very Tween Halloween” – 9 Ways to Celebrate Halloween with your Tween

It’s the day before Halloween, Halloween Eve if you will, and I cannot help but want to make it special for my tween daughter. Why? Because I love her… duh, silly!

And maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it seem like time is passing by quicker than ever before?! I mean, October just started and it’s already over! In just two days, I will be packing up my Halloween decor and putting my Christmas tree up and writing content for the New Year. How is that even possible? Nuts!

With my daughter being my only (fur-less) “baby” and adolescence creeping in, I cannot help but wonder how much longer I have before she stops wanting to be around me to celebrate special occasions, like Halloween. Soon enough, I am sure I will become public enemy number one because I won’t allow her to spend all of her free time with her friends. For now, I am going to soak it all in…

Maybe you’re feeling similar or maybe you just want to have a good time, either way, celebrating Halloween doesn’t necessarily get trickier as children get older, but it definitely changes with their interests.

Without further ado, here are some ways I celebrated Halloween with my tween all month long, plus a few more plans for tonight and tomorrow:

Halloween Crafting – Yes! Tweens STILL love this! If crafting sounds childish, it may be because you’re thinking of how you used to make maccaroni necklaces and finger paint with your kiddo when they were really, really little. It’s time to level up your crafting game!

Some new crafting ideas that your tween will love:

• T-Shirt Designs (No Cricut? No problem. You can purchase pre-cut iron-on vinyl designs on Etsy or at Michael’s craft stores. Also, tweens still enjoy tie-dye!)
• Letter-Bead Bracelets (we purchase our letter beads & some pretty gold beads too from Hobby Lobby, but you can get them on Amazon or at any craft store)
• Painting Pumpkins (acrylic or craft paint should do the trick)
• Painting a Halloween scene on a canvas
• Painting natural wood Halloween decor (Michaels sold some pre-made decor and everything else you need for this too)

One of our favorite crafts this year was making Halloween t-shirts with designs we created and sourced in Canva. We have a Cricut that cuts iron-on vinyl among other materials and purchased plain t-shirts from the craft store. My daughter and I mailed a few shirts as BOO-grams for her cousins and paired them with pouches of cotton candy that she wrapped in fabric to make them look like ghosts. Super cute! Everyone loved them!

Manicures & Pedicures with Spooky Designs – We don’t get our nails done all the time, but I thought the nail salon would make for a relaxing mommy and me date at the beginning of the month, and I was right! We opted for the basic mani & pedi with gel polish, but splurged on some free-hand Halloween designs. My daughter selected a purple polish for her finger nails with tiny black spider webs and orange polish with black bats for her toe nails; I agreed to black polish with white spider webs on my big toes for my “matching” pedi and a nice neutral polish for my not-so-halloween manicure. No doubt, my tween is way more adventurous and cooler than me! Thanks to the durability of gel polish, our pedicures lasted all month and our manicures about one to two weeks. A little bit pricey, but worth it! To save some money, you can DIY your mani/pedis at home with your favorite Halloween-colored nail polish.

Halloween Costume Shopping – Choosing a Halloween costume used to be so much easier when my daughter was really little. Back then, I could take her to the store to find her favorite animal or character as a costume all in one pack. She would wear her costumes all the time too! LOL!

Even though it isn’t such a simple process for us anymore, it’s still something we love to do together.

Back Story: My tween is BIG into Barbie now and has been for a long time. The dolls, accessories, and dream house may be the only toys she plays with anymore, but mostly, she finds ways to customize her dolls and make her own rooms, clothing, and accessories for them via YouTube tutorials. She was maybe six years old when she learned how to make clothes for her barbies out of balloons! Who knew? (Not me… I was a Tom Boy when I was her age).

It made perfect sense that my girly girl would be some version of Barbie this year since the movie was a major hit in theaters over the summer. With brands all over using it as inspiration for product development and marketing material, I figured finding the perfect pink outfit wouldn’t be any trouble at all. So we went shopping on a Friday after school about halfway through October, and after trying on about six different outfits, she found a great dress that would transform her into “Stereotypical Barbie” (it’s exactly what you think of when you picture Barbie). I ordered pink shoes with a low heel, a hair bow, and flower accessories to match from Amazon. We also picked up a blonde wig and a Barbie box that she could wear from Spirit Halloween. I repainted her finger nails with a sparkling pink polish and she had some bright pink lip gloss too.

Shopping for a Halloween costumes is a great way to connect and bond with Tweens. My daughter and I spent countless hours of quality time together on this task alone, which truly nourished both of our souls. If you despise shopping, like I typically do, a homemade costume can have the same impact, if not greater.

Fall Festivals, Trunk-or-Treats, + Costume Contests – With the perfect ensemble, we attended two fall festivals this month. The first was the fall fest and trunk-or-treat at my daughters school. The second was our community fall festival and costume contest. Both were free of charge and had so many activities to entertain the whole family. There were vendors to shop and food & beverage trucks to feed us, and opportunities to bring home lots of goodies. My daughter also won first place in the costume contest with an Amazon gift card as her prize! She couldn’t believe it! Instagram is a great place to search for events happening around you; just do a simple keyword search on there and you’ll find something to do every weekend in October.

Halloween Treats – One night, on a whim, we whipped up some cupcakes from one of those Fun-Fetti boxed cake mixes… my tween loves to show off her skills now that she can crack the eggs, measure the ingredients, and use the mixer. I think we also had a race to see who could fill more of the cupcake holders with batter before we licked our spoons (even though we’ve been warned not to). It was fun! I had some cream cheese frosting and sprinkles in the pantry to decorate them the next day during a play date with our friends. Another time, we grabbed a cookie decorating kit from the bakery inside of our local grocery store, which she did with another friend during a sleepover at our house. This past weekend, a fellow entrepreneur dropped off some cookies that she baked and decorated for my family too. Look how adorable they are! Follow @madebyraquelann on Instagram & place an order with her via the form linked in her bio…

See more of these cookies here on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzAHOv7Pfof/

Decorating For Halloween – It was a STRUGGLE to find any new decorations for outside this month (and I tossed my old ones when we moved storage units over the summer). We didn’t sweat it because we will be out trick-or-treating on Halloween per usual, and our little neighborhood doesn’t really get any trick-or-treaters anyway. “If kids do trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, they wouldn’t be happy if we had decorations up and no one was home to give them candy.” That’s our story and we’re sticking to it! We decorated for fall outside by the front door, and found some adorable, glittery bats to hang inside. We made a Happy Halloween sign with my felt letter board and hung some orange, black and white garland on the entryway bench where my “trick-or-treat” throw pillow sits.

Halloween Movie Nights – This is THE very best time to watch throw back movies… what tween doesn’t love Casper the friendly ghost?!

Some of our favorite movies & shows to watch during spooky season:

• Hocus Pocus
• Casper
• Hotel Transylvania (1, 2, & 3… and 4)
• The Addams Family
• Twilight (only the first one seems appropriate enough)
• Nailed It! (& other baking or decorating shows with Halloween-themed episodes)
• The Haunted Mansion (any version of this, but we like the Muppets)

Don’t forget to make popcorn and eat those Halloween treats you baked/purchased! Put blankets and pillows galore on the living room floor (that rhymes!) for an extra nice time! (okay, I am done) We will be doing another movie night on Halloween too.

Trick-or–Treating – According to my (not-so) little girl, the plan is to go trick-or-treating “only for a little bit” so we can have plenty of time for a movie and pizza at home after she collects enough candy…

Enough candy for “The Switch Witch” that is (hold on, I’ll explain in a minute).

All of these things are my tweens idea of a good time spent with her mama! I am all for it! Keeping Halloween low-key but still fun is AMAZING… or should I say BOO-tiful?! I know this seems like A LOT because it is, but spreading these activities out throughout October made for a great month together. Even if you choose just one thing to do from the list above, the quality time spent together will be good for you and your tween.

Since you made it this far, I think you will be interested in the Halloween tradition we do every year since my daughter was old enough to trick-or-treat… The Switch Witch! I wish every mama (& papa) could know about it. I found the book almost a decade ago. It describes the story of how kids leave their candy out for a friendly witch to come take it in the middle of the night to replace it with something far more valuable to the child. We may have adjusted it a little over time, but my daughter is definitely talking about it already! She is hoping the Switch Witch will take her candy and leave something Barbie related from her wish list, I’m sure. Here’s a link to a Youtube video with the story of The Switch Witch: https://youtu.be/0RsTr58-qIU?si=w2DMnQL6sV06-CBv & I encourage you to purchase a copy of the book for your littlest ones!

Posted By: juliafredricksen · In: Lifestyle