Halloween on the cheap

Much as we'd probably prefer to hide under the duvet and avoid having to open our doors to hoodies in masks asking for food, Halloweeen, when you have young un's, is impossible to ignore. But before you throw money at the problem and end up with a house-full of e-numbers and plastic tat, check out budget baby lady Becky Goddard-Hill's top tips on getting spooky on the cheap.

Work the numbers:

First of all it's a good idea at Halloween to keep your numbers low and invite mums along too, especially since you will be heading out and about. We had a spookily brilliant Halloween last year with tiny cost and huge amounts of scary fun. Here are some ideas you might like to try:

Spooky Deco

Halloween colouring pages can be easily found and printed off from Google images and skeletons, wizards, ghosts and monsters can be cut out and stuck on your table and doors as decorations before your guests arrive.

Dressing up tips

Fancy dress is customary at Halloween but can be pricey. I have some alternate options to shop bought for you. You could borrow a costume, make one (or ask your favourite aunty too), go for it with the face paints, or check out ebay.  Kids grow so fast and what they want to be dressed at

Halloween will change form year to year. It is unlikely they will wear a costume twice. My son Frankie wanted to be a scary monster for his party. His little mask cost just 2.99 and he got scary monster gloves for that too!  He dressed all in red and looked great. Masks can be worn again and again so can be a top investment.

Scary stuff to do

First of all we coloured in spider pictures with black crayons and added sparkly glitter for eyes, which we left to dry whilst we had some snacks and played some games.. 

For games we had a spider on a spoon relay race race mums v kids (beg and borrow some plastic spiders) The winners got spooky snacks and the losers got a coffee.  (The mums didn’t try too hard when they heard this).

Ghoulish snacks

Spooky snacks consisted of little cheese sandwiches cut into the shape of ghosts with raisins for eyes accompanied by cucumber slices with black paper hats on to look like witches.  We  had Special Spiders for pudding which were chocolate butons with raisin legs which my kids had loads of fun setting out on little plates earlier.

Tire them out

After snacks we sat in a circle and sang ‘Little Miss Muffet’  (the children had to get up and run round the circle and back to their place when the spider sat down beside her!) and then ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ and  all the children got a big tickle when the spider ran up the spout again.

Pray to the pumpkin

Then we were ready to light our pumpkin (pre-carved I hasten to add) and set it in the window ahead of trick or treating. We asked the great wise pumpkin head to make sure we got lots of treats.

Where to go to trick or treat

We called in just a few neighbours who I had pre-checked we could visit and came back to divide the spoils.

We had a really top, no fuss party. No need for party bags either at Halloween as they already have their goodie stash!

And if you want to make sure you have a broadly sane Halloween night then we'd suggest putting a time cap on when you open your door to trick or treaters. Then... pour yourself a big glass of spooky wine as soon as the ghosts, witches and Fireman Sam's are safely tucked up in bed dreaming of marshmallow mountains. Job done!

For more tips on how to save money (for important things like nights out with the gals), check out Becky's book How to Afford Time Off with Your Baby on Amazon and all leading book retailers. Becky also blogs about baby budgeting at www.babybudgeting.co.uk

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