This year’s Halloween has turned out to be a blast, for the kids most specially! I think it’s our most eventful Halloween to date and has been quite meaningful because we got to spend it with people we care about. Here’s a round up of what we did over the last few days leading up to November first…
QUICK COSTUME DIY
My girls like to dress up. Each year, I try my best to put together the costumes they want to wear. It may take quite some effort on my part but I don’t mind because I do like dressing them up and I enjoy the challenge of coming up with something out of stuff we already own.
Thankfully, they picked easy ones this year. After scrounging around the house, I’m glad we got to arrange them all in a day. Jo was Princess Aurora, Summer was a deep sea diver and Emma was an 80s pop star (as suggested by me!).
SPOOKTACULAR PLAYDATE
The Folkmans are easily on top of our favorite family list! Amber and her kids come up with the most fun activities both for indoors and outdoors (Check out amommabroad.com to find out for yourself)! Hanging out with them is always a lot of fun but can also be super chill. You can count on them to go all out in their decorating too! Several of my mom friends and I decided to meet up at the Folkmans for a Halloween-themed potluck playdate.
Amber did an animated reading of the book, “Room On The Broom” with matching spooky music and then she taught the kids some silly Halloween songs. Afterwards, we all made paper puppets which we used for shadow play. We all had a grand time! Us moms were able to catch up and snack up while the kids happily played.
CRAZY COOKIE DECORATING
Our unschoolers squad, which my sister-in-law Martine formed this year met up on Halloween morning in Scout’s Honor, Vertis North for a cookie decorating activity.
For P135 per kid, they each get to pick their dough (red velvet, classic choco chip, double choco or plain chewy) and the toppings they want to decorate it with. They went crazy making cookie faces out of craisins, marshmallows, choco chips, pretzels and more. Anything goes, really! While the friendly guys at Scouts Honor baked the cookies they had decorated, the kids played board games.
These kids and their parents are our new friends and we’re glad to be able to spend more time to get to know them better.
TREMENDOUS TRICK OR TREAT!
Halloween wouldn’t be complete without trick or treating and as condo-dwellers, we were fortunate to have been invited (again) by the Folkmans to go do it in their village. I must say, nothing beats door to door trick or treating in full costume. The kids most definitely enjoyed it and they’re thrilled to have collected so much candy which we’re systematically rationing, by the way.
Just like a cherry on top, the day ended fantastically with dinner at Amare La Cucina in Kapitolyo, a really fun and delicious pizza place where they let kids help prepare the pizzas!
ALL SAINTS
Finally, for All Saints Day, I had the girls and their two cousins for the afternoon so I prepared a craft project for them to do. We learned a little about the saints each of them are named after (because they all are) and then helped them make paper mosaic artwork of their respective patron saints. It was a nice, quiet activity to keep their hands busy and also a chance to familiarize them with these great men and women and what made them honorable and holy.
I look at my kids and wonder if they are even aware of how lucky they are to be part of such a wonderfully creative community. We’ve been having a lot of these magical and spontaneous days lately, and I think it’s really all because of the people we spend them with. I appreciate how our friends share their time, skills and resources with us that it also makes me want to be better at sharing our own time, skills and resources with them. Really. I didn’t expect Halloween could be as meaningful and refreshing as the one we just had.
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