Sentimental Diva

If you’re of the generation that looked forward to having Santa in the house on Christmas eve, then you might want to pass on that holiday tradition to your kids. Now, you are the one stuffing the stockings with cute knick-knacks. Of course, ten years down the road, you will have to face some indignant faces asking why you lied about Santa. They WILL find out eventually, but who cares about that? What matters is you can keep the tradition alive!

Family traditions are just a few of the things that define you as a family. These traditions create memories, which can be very important if you have kids. Even when they’re adults, they will refer to the happy times you spent Christmas together and reminisce with their own kids. If you want to leave a legacy, you don’t need lots of money to pass on to your kids, you simply have to make them feel that they became a part of something really special and important as far as your family is concerned.

Important Traditions During the Holidays

- Traveling
- Opening Presents Under the Tree
- Santa
- Snowman Building (if you have snow)
- Sledding

If you’re religious, you can have mass together as a family. Also, meals are a great way to wish each other a happy Christmas. Don’t be too strict on these days, and let the kids run around excitedly with their new gifts. Christmas gifts are wonderful, especially if given as a part of a family holiday tradition.

If you have children, Halloween is a great excuse to have some family fun together. It’s an opportunity to dress up the whole family in weird and frightening costumes; and to decorate your normally peaceful home in the out-of-this-world Halloween theme, turning it into a scary haunted house to the delight of your children.

Every year can be such family fun opening up the boxes of your stock of Halloween decorations. Children love getting out the hairy giant spiders and spider webs, spooky ghosts, witches on broomsticks, ghoulish outfits and costumes, vampire teeth, witches hats and noses and everything else that goes into making up Halloween. You would think it would frighten them, but children take great delight helping put up the the haunting and eerie decorations that go with Halloween.

Everyone goes about their Halloween celebration in a different way. Some are too busy or not interested. Many people just make their Halloween decoration simple, such as simply carving out a pumpkin face, putting a candle inside and placing it in a window facing the street.

Others like to put in an all-out effort in their front yard, with subdued and changing lighting, lightning flashes, cemetery tombstones, zombies, ghosts, vampires, bats, spider webs and even fog machines and sound effects. It’s quite a wacky idea when you think about it, but all good fun. Yet other people concentrate on a Halloween decoration for their front door entry way, to offer a spooky welcome to trick or treaters.

It can be well worth loading up the family and friends in your car at dusk and driving around your neighborhood in the days leading up to Halloween, just to see and enjoy the amazing effort some people will put in to participate and share in the celebration. You can bet your children will be planning out their trick or treating when they know who is in the Halloween spirit and likely to welcome them with good fun, and a good stock of candies and sweet treats.

Occasionally you will find people who also decorate the inside of their homes, and perhaps have tours through their seasonally haunted house to show it off and to raise funds for a charity. Your family will take delight in the visit experience if you are fortunate to have one of these enthusiasts in your neighborhood.

Others like to decorate just a room or two in their homes as the theme for a Halloween costume dinner or party, and invite guests around for some Halloween fun.

The only bad Halloween craft project is the Halloween craft project that takes too long. You know the ones. The craft projects that have so many steps that you’ve lost the attention of your kids before step 2. Give these easy Halloween craft ideas a try. They’re easy and fast to create; they’re fun, and the end results are spooky enough to scare even a cynical adult.

Antenna Characters

Get your car ready for Halloween with spooky antenna decor. These adorable characters look great at the top of your automobile antenna. Hey, if your house is dressed up for Halloween, why shouldn’t your car? With various Halloween-themed colors of flat fun foam (orange, black, white, green), draw a light outline of a pumpkin, ghost, spider or Frankenstein head, approximately 4-inches tall and 3-inches wide. Cut out the shapes and with a single hole punch, punch two holes in each shape, one approximately one inch from the top of the shape and another hole approximately one inch from the bottom of the shape.

With glitter glue or permanent markers, decorate the shape with facial features, an outline or anything you’d like. Allow to dry thoroughly. Once dried, you can attach to your automobile antenna by placing the antenna through the bottom hole from the back of the shape to the front. Then place the antenna through the top hole, front to back. The Antenna Character should be secure and should withstand normal driving conditions.

Halloween Kiddie Mosaics

Mosaic art using tiles is very popular nowadays. Kids can duplicate this popular craft using construction paper instead of tiles or glass. Prior to gathering the children around the table, cut small squares of various colors of paper, orange, red, blue, yellow, white, black, green, etc. On a piece of heavy stock, white paper, draw the outline of a pumpkin, Frankenstein or other Halloween character. With a small dab of all-purpose glue on the back of each square, kids can mosaic their way to a uniquely creative masterpiece that can be framed and hung on the wall for many Halloween seasons to come.

Pumpkin Painting

In less than one hour, you and your child can create the most adorable pumpkin craft ready to proudly display in your home. Pumpkin Painting is the perfect activity for little goblins who aren’t old enough to handle the jack-o-lantern carving duties.

Paint Silly Faces of Pumpkins

With simple supplies like acrylic paints, markers, newspaper and sealer, kids can paint whimsical, silly faces on their pumpkins. Or they can paint their favorite cartoon character, Halloween motif or harvest design. Painted pumpkins do not rot near as quickly as carved pumpkins so it is much more economical to paint pumpkins rather than carving them and it’s also much safer and more hands-on for toddlers since there is no knife involved.