It’s Starting to Look a Lot Like…. Halloween!

I love the holidays. I love celebrating. I love parties. I love decorating and crafting and cooking and baking and fun. And Halloween gets me extra excited. Not because it’s my favorite holiday – but because it’s like, the kick off to the best part of the year for me. I mean – Halloween comes with loads of cool stuff anyway, like costumes and pumpkins and treats. But it’s like the door opening to a non-stop extravaganza of holiday fun for the whole rest of the year.

We decorated the house weeks ago. Grandma {my mom} lives with me part of the time, and always helps us put up decorations. I remember helping her when I was a kid {and we still have so many of the same decorations we had back then – I love it.} So it makes my mom-heart happy to watch Abby get so much enjoyment following along with grandma and putting up fun stuff for each holiday too. Priceless. We’ve got a spooky graveyard outside, lights in the bushes and trees, and lots of ghosts and goblins inside the house too. So, while I have lots of awesome pieces to decorate the house {and am trying to cut down on buying more. *Trying*} – you do always need a few new things for a holiday like Halloween. I’m talking costumes, baking supplies, and of course – CANDY. 

Abby and I decided to take a little shopping trip to Target yesterday, to pick up a few fun festive additions. I’d already ordered one Halloween costume {Little Red Riding Hood} – but since we have four different Halloween parties to go to over the course of two weeks, I figured it’d be a good idea to have two costumes. I mean, you know how messy a 3 year-old gets with her treats, right? And I am so so so so so so sosososososooso SO in love with her in this Merida costume. {You’ve seen Brave, right?} We love anything with Disney Princesses, but Merida does have a special spot in my heart… She’s a very feisty, independent, fearless girl. Just like Abby.

So, even though I was dying to get this Snow White costume we found, I caved and let her get Merida instead. And it’s stinkin’ adorable. The wig totally “makes it” – and was only $10 bucks. I buy so many Disney Princess dress up outfits and accessories, I feel like this is a great buy as a costume, since we can just add it to our “play pretend” closet, and use it all year.

We’re going to have a little Halloween get together here at the house on Halloween night. My brothers and the kids will come over, and we’ll head the Truck or Treat at the church up the road. We don’t have sidewalks out here where we live, there are no street lights, and the road is really winding. So it’s not exactly the safest place to take a toddler Trick or Treating, you know? Then we’ll all come back to my house for Jack O Lantern pizza, spooky treats, and pumpkin carving. I picked up some cool tools for creative pumpkin carving, so each of the kids will have their own tools to create something spooky or sweet – with adult help, or course :) But I also bought some cool gear for creepy drinks – eyeball ice cube trays, and Caramel Apple soda. I can’t wait to create some cocktails and mocktails with these. {Tip: When you’ve used the ice cube tray once, it’d be easy to refill again with more of the gummy eyeball candies from Target.} There was even a really clever idea on the package I might try too:

I also bought some yummy Halloween baking goodies too. Brownie mix, pearly sprinkles in fall colors, and some glittery icing. Abby and I whipped up some simple mini-brownie bites, drizzled them with the tube of icing, and added a few pretty sprinkles. I also love that these sprinkles will totally work all through fall, even for our Thanksgiving baking. You know what else is awesome? That Target has such a great selection of grocery stuff, so I was able to pick up the rest of our brownie ingredients too. One stop shopping rocks my socks.

We also picked up some fun ready-made treats too. Daddy looooves him some Oreos. It’s funny – Abby twists her cookies apart. She eats the middle. Then she gives daddy the cookies. She calls them the scraps. “Here daddy. You can have my scraps. Ok?” – with a smile. Cracks me up, every single time. But he likes the cookies more than the middle anyway. They’re a good pair :)

Expect More. Pay Less.

Tell me – where do you do your Halloween shopping? Have you decorated yet, or bought your costumes? What Halloween traditions do you have? Share some of your fun with me in the comments – I love hearing from you. And be sure to check out #TargetHalloween on your fave social media sites to see some of the cool stuff other moms found at Target too. Thanks for reading!

Compensation was provided by Target via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Target.