With finally running the New York Marathon this year and having it fall so close to Halloween as well as my oldest daughter’s birthday, I concocted a glorious plan to trick-or-treat with family and friends in the city while celebrating her birthday in the city. However, my soon-to-be-teen had other ideas. In true teen style, she begged and pleaded to spend Halloween at home so she could trick-or-treat with her friends and also celebrate her birthday with them.
If I agreed, we would need to fly out on the earliest Saturday morning flight to NY. The very idea made me nervous. Entertaining a Halloween party and then leaving for NY all while praying and hoping the plane would land on time; plus make it to expo in time to pick-up my race packet. Like any good pushover mom riddled with mama guilt, I agreed to this maddening marathon travel plan just to please my teen. Allana was so excited to host a Halloween party for her birthday, my social media savvy teenager even created a Instagram hashtag: #HappyHallowteen.
As nervous as I was, honestly it all worked out. We hosted a very simple, Halloween party. For time’s sake and for our own sanity, Iron Chef Allan and I skipped out on making the food and took the party guests to PDQ for the Halloween BOGO deal dinner. With some photobooth prop fun, Target cupcakes, pumpkin keg full of root beer and skull steins to fill, it wasn’t anything fancy but it was perfect party in the eyes of my newly teenager.
Thankfully, I kept the kids’ costumes simple this year too. Allana wanted to dress as the Mad Hatter’s Daughter and she created the look through bits and pieces she found at a variety of stores. The tiny top hat came from Target.
Emmalynn wanted to dress as a black cat, another simple costume created with just a long sleeve black leotard, black tights and a tutu from a variety of stores. Her ears, tail and collar came from Spirit.
Liam wanted to be Sonic the Hedgehog but I refused to spend the money on a crappy costume that he would only wear once. I knew I could make something as nice or even better. A blue t-shirt, blue pants, some felt pieces and a Sonic hat I purchased on Ebay completed his homemade Sonic the Hedgehog costume and he looked so darn cute too! (The costume was so simple and I’ll share the directions in another post.)
While still in crafty mode, the kids and Dad carved pumpkins.
Allan painted a pumpkin teal to show our support for The Teal Pumpkin Project. To be fair to children with food allergies, we offered a variety of treats including candy (chocolate without nuts and other sweets), pretzels, toys and glow bracelets.
During the day, I had to be in two places at once for two different costume parades, one at the big kids’ school and one at the preschool. Somehow I pulled it all off like a supermom and even snapped some decent photos of my kids smiling.
As for the trick-or-treating, the kids had a blast and walked for miles for candy!
By the end of the night, we definitely a HappyHallowTeen!
Of course, we couldn’t eat it all! Once we returned from NYC, my kids graciously donated their candy to the Halloween Candy Buy Back program through our local dentist.
