There are only two constants: You MUST truss up your house in colored lights and spooky decorations, and you MUST wear a costume. No matter how old you are, the costume is important. No, you can’t wear the same costume every year, unless you do something really awesome with it. (I know of a guy who would dress in a wizard’s robe and let kids come into his backyard and look at the planets through his telescope. How awesome is that?)

You could also do a little “stealth indoctrination”, if you want. See if you can get ahold of some mini science kits or maybe some booklets on stargazing – I’m not sure what’s available in that regard – and hand it out along with generous offerings of candy to the tots that show up at your door.

And when you take your little one out trick-or-treating, it’s much more fun to do it in a group. You might see if there are any moms with little kids who are willing to put together a proper trick-or-treating party and pillage the neighborhood using droves of small children. Much more fun than going out on your own.

Here’s the way we do the seeds. When you carve a pumpkin, spread out a lot of newspapers because it will be messy! First cut off the top part with the stem. Then use a metal spoon to scrape all the insides out (“guts” as my kids call it) and set aside on the newspapers until the inside of the pumpkin is scraped clean.

Then just start pulling the seeds from the pumpkin flesh and place them in a collander or strainer. It’s messy and takes a while but doing it with your kids makes it go by faster and creates some good memories. After you’ve got all the seeds pulled out and in the collander, rinse for a few minutes under running water. Then spread out on paper towels and pat dry. After they’re dry you can then put them in a bowl, toss with some oil (a tablespoon or so) and seasonings, then spread out in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake at 400F. Good luck!

That sounds wonderful! Can I come to your house? Okay, seriously, I tried the pumpkin seed thing, but I failed miserably! I left out the oil, I see! Also, though, how do you get the shell off? (Wow, I feel like a total incompetent idiot! I’ve had pumpkin seeds, they were just storebought!)

For decorating, I just pick up anything I like at Party City or Dollar Tree and over the years I’ve acquired a pretty good collection of decorations. Regular lightbulbs get replaced with purple or orange bulbs.

Of course, carving pumpkins is always a necessary part of Halloween! About a week before Halloween, I take the kids to a pumpkin farm and we pick out pumpkins, go on a hayride, etc. This is always a part of our tradition of getting ready for Halloween and our party. We carve the pumpkins 1 or 2 days before Halloween.

One of our traditional Halloween foods are pumpkin seeds – we save the seeds after carving, rinse & dry them, toss with oil and seasoned salt, and bake at 400F degree oven until crisp. We always have hot apple cider on Halloween. Sometimes of the traditional foods we have on Halloween is just regular food that has been renamed – chicken wings become bat wings, meatballs become eyeballs, etc.

Check out familyfun.com. They always have great ideas for Halloween!

Making creepy food is always fun, too. I got a lot of ideas this year from one of the blogs on my blogroll: Our Best Bites. If you follow her Halloween treats link, it’ll take you to complete pictorials and recipes for a dozen or more creepy edibles. My favorite was the worm sandwich: quartered hot dogs boiled and then rolled in bbq sauce… looks so gross!

Halloween is such a fun time for kids. I’m very glad your little heathen daughter will get to experience it!

I like the bobbing for apples idea. Julieanne LOVES apples. And I like the brack idea, too! Takes me back to my Irish roots. I think I will do both of those next year!

I wish we lived closer together. I could help you with all of your trivial secular needs. Actually, I wish we *both* lived closer to Esperanza. We could crash her spooky kid party together. That girl knows how to have kid fun!

Hope you have a great Halloween!

We lived in a tightly knit community with a lot of children when I was younger and Halloween was alway a very big deal. Trick or treat time tended to vary depending on the age of the child. Often there were costume parties. I could be wrong, but I think outside of trick-or-treating traditions are rather fluid. Anything scary and creative will do. The was an older woman without young children who lived up the street from us who used to dress very elaborately as a witch, decorate her house and had a big cauldron in the middle of the room which contained a punch she called “cat’s blood.” She used dry ice to make it seem creepy. She also ran around reciting “incantations.” All the kids would wind up there. She was an academic who was very tame the rest of the year.

If you have any good ideas, try them. It’s not as if you can be sacreligious.