I can’t believe I’ve had 13 Halloweens with Kylan, 11 with Koby, and 7 with Klara. It’s crazy how much they’ve grown. One thing is unchanging, though. No matter how big they are, holidays are so much fun with them in my life.

Decorating the house for the holidays is always a lot of fun.

We had a small Halloween party because we knew trick or treating was a little risky this year due to COVID. One of my tips to have a cheap, but festive party is tablecloths and balloons. As soon as I put on black and orange tablecloths, it instantly felt like a party. I also LOVE balloon letters. I use them for birthday parties all the time, but I found this BOO balloon set at Wal-Mart for just $1.74 and it was the perfect photo prop.

Our party started at 5 o’clock. We ate dinner, carved pumpkins, painted pumpkins, played games, and made snack crafts.

The games that I planned out were Halloween Bingo, guess how many candy corns are in the jar, and we went on a ghost hunt. We had a dance party to Halloween music with a strobe light downstairs and we made the cutest snack with Oreos and Reese cups.

This year at work our Pre-K crew dressed up as Sesame Street.

Klara has lived in her black cat dress all of October. Fun fact: she has two of them because she loves it so much! And if you’ve seen me, chances are I’ve been wearing my Hocus Pocus sweatshirt every time I’ve gone out of the house with no shame.

I love that Halloween fell on a Saturday this year! I surprised the kiddos with Blackbird Bakery donuts for breakfast and their treat buckets. The boys are older and only had candy and snacks in theirs, but Klara had a lot of goodies, all for under $12. It was actually cheaper to fill her bucket than to fill the boys buckets with candy. The price of candy is ridiculous, but I can’t live without chocolate so as unfortunate as it is, I will take your $14.99 bag of candy.

Halloween was so weird this year, just like the rest of 2020, so we made the decision to not take our kiddos trick or treating. Our area and even some of our closest friends are experiencing COVID-19 firsthand, so we didn’t feel comfortable going from house to house. That saved us money because Koby didn’t want a costume this year. Klara wanted to be a witch so I picked her up a $3 hat and a small broom. She was able to wear it to school for trick or treating. I will never get tired of dresses, her bright red lipstick, and spider rings on those little fingers of hers.

We couldn’t have had a Halloween party without pumpkins, so we went to one of our favorite local spots for pumpkins this year.

Once Halloween is over, it’s always hard to accept the fact that I can’t keep Hocus Pocus on repeat or eat an entire bag of candy with the excuse, “Listen, it’s Halloween, okay?”

I hope your October was filled with all of your favorite things. I’ll leave my favorite things here for you.

Pumpkin cream cold brews, warm and gooey homemade chocolate chip cookies, colorful leaves, magical Halloween mornings, and pumpkin patches with my little loves. I love you, October.