The question this week from the Heart of the Matter is: Halloween or Fall? How does your family celebrate?
Growing up my family LOVED celebrating Halloween. I remember my dad making a haunted house for the trick-or-treaters in the old barn/shed behind our house in Salt Lake. Later when I was about 10 my dad helped me become the Bride of Frankenstein for a school Halloween contest. He had me lay upside down on the couch so my hair was hanging down. He blow dried it then used several cans of hair spray to make it stand up straight. A nice white streak was then sprayed into my hair. It was very cool. We had parties, monster mashes, and just plain old fun.
I’m rather a bit sad I don’t do so much with my own kids. The biggest reason is how far we live out of town. It’s just not worth it to get all gussied up, drive for over half an hour just to walk around begging for candy then drive all the way back. My children all love to dress up so it’s a good thing our bookmobile librarian gives a Halloween party every year. The best part? The bookmobile comes straight to our house! I love helping my kids come up with fun costumes and silly treats to share at the party.
We do enjoy celebrating fall. Decorating the house, lighting spicy scented candles, carving pumpkins, baking goodies, nighttime campfires, and our favorite tradition – Thanks and Giving Trees. Each child has two trees, one labeled Thanks and the other Giving. Each evening before family prayers we each cut out a leaf, write something we are thankful for on it, and glue it to the Thanks tree. On another leaf we write one thing we’ve done to serve or give to others that day. This leaf goes on the Giving tree. By Thanksgiving our trees are full of leaves. We spend the evening reading what each person is thankful for and what they have done to help others that month. Click on the link above to read more about it and also download a pdf file with the trees and leaves.
How do you celebrate fall?
Oh wow…I love the idea of the trees. I saw that you posted the template below and I will be coming back to print those out. Thank you for sharing!
I was just considering doing a tree thing after seein this post on The little travelers
her gratitude treee… good idea for those that celebrate thanksgiving (which we don’t in australia) but I thought november would be a good month to do it leading up to christmas and all
http://thelittletravelers.typepad.com/the_little_travelers/2008/10/gratitude.html
and if you read my halloween post you would know my stance on this;)
I find it funny actually as in Australia at church(lds) masks are not allowed at all.. at anything.. it is against church policy.. is this the same in the US? It is honestly difficult for us to believe that lds celebrate halloween.. I laughed at the many blogs that I read that were cutting out ghosts and witches etc while watching General Conference?? what the??? anyway I know most lds celebrate the good in the holiday and not the evil.. I will stop now 🙂
Love the tree idea! How cool! I might have to incorporate something like that in november. 😀
So where’s the pictures? Of your hair…
And love the trees. My mom tried something similar to this a few years ago at Thanksgiving Dinner. I like this activity to help get us quiet for evening family prayers. As always, thanks for the great idea.
ACk! Just wrote a long comment and it dissapeared.
Short version: I like pumpkin pie and baby keeps me too busy to celebrate the way I want but it’s all good.
Thanks for sharing!
I love Halloween, and for me it would be worth the drive. We lived in the boonies when I was a teenager, and what I missed most was seeing all the little kids in their costumes–precious!
I decorate for Fall around September and leave it all up until Thanksgiving is past, there is something that just shores up my sacral chakra in Fall Decorations.
Are you guys doing a Trunk or Treat at the church?
I LOVE your thanks and giving tree idea!! Thanks for that1
You have inspired me to start some traditions.
Halloween is getting more popular here at last but there are so many fun things we should be doing.