When I was a kid, I looooved Owl Magazine. I had a subscription and waited for it impatiently every month to see what amazing things they’d show me next, to read the new adventures of the Mighty Mites, and to try out new puzzles. I still love it. (My daughter is more in the Chickadee range these days, and loves that, too, now that I finally convinced her that she was old enough to move up from Chirp.)
So now that I’m a grownup (at least part of the time) and spend more time online than I do reading magazines, I am thrilled to find that OwlKids has launched a fantastic new facebook page filled with the kind of fun stuff I loved about the magazine in the first place. Crafty Fridays for neat stuff to do with kids at home and at work? Check. Mailbag Mondays, showing stuff kids have sent them, just like the magazine always did? Cute, and occasionally hilarious. My personal favourite, though, is Way Back Wednesdays, featuring spreads from the magazine’s archives. So. Awesome.
But what does this have to do with Hallowe’en? Oh, guys. This month, that page is full of spooky goodness. They’ve started already, with downloadable doodle pages from the Beastly Books and today, a poll about creepy Hallowe’en critters. And through this month, they’ll have puzzles, riddles, crafts, and more fun, all building towards the big day! You should go.
They’re not alone, either. Mastermind Toys, one of my very favourite purveyors of wonderful things to play with, has launched its own facebook page, too, where they have contests, let you know about fun new goodies and sales, answer questions, and post art and pictures that proud parents send in. (I am all over the Playmobil sale they’ve got on right now, which I just read about there – yes! So handy.)
And? To make all this online awesomeness even better? OwlKids and Mastermind are teaming up for Hallowe’en – and having a contest! Right here! And the prize pack is fantastic. I’ve got to admit to being a wee bit envious of the one who wins a year of Owl (or Chirp or Chickadee – your choice) and a copy each of My Beastly Book of Monsters and Fear This Book from OwlKids, as well as a Hallowe’en tote bag and SpiceBox craft kit and a large Beanie Boo plush from Mastermind.
To enter – and get you in the mood for Hallowe’en – tell us what you are doing for Hallowe’en! Re-reading a creepy favourite? Decorating? Baking spooky snacks? Share you great ideas here!
Contest closes October 24th.
Click here for Contest Rules and Regulations.
UrbanMoms.ca members are eligible to win so don’t forget to sign-in. Not a member yet? Click here to join.
My daughter is having a Halloween party for her friends.
We are having a Halloween party with all of our wonderful friends and the kids friends
I am baking, baking and more baking for my daughter’s preschool halloween party. I am making skeleton cookies and ghost meringue cookies! Yum!
We have a pumpkin harvest party every year, with about 18 kids, parents and grandparents, kids do crafts, tractor ride to the pumpkins and back, then the parents help them make their scariest pumpkin for the big night.
we are doing some halloween baking, as well as we went to the pumpkin patch and picked out our pumpkins for jack o lanterns and now we are searching online for some carving ideas. i bought myself a scary witch mask so i am ready to spook my granddaughter when she comes!!
We decorate the house and our local mall usually has pumpkin carving the weekend before, which we do together as a family. On Halloween we order pizza and while my husband stays home and gives out candy, my kids and myself go trick or treeting.
We bake cookies and decorate the house with wonderful decorations.
We like to decorate the house and carve pumpkins.
I decorate for Hallowe’en around mid-October. I also begin watching scary movies and let the young ones watch Hallowe’en-oriented cartoons & TV shows at the same time. This gets us ALL in the mood!
We are decorating with scary glow in the dark skeletons, bats that swing from the porch light and a lovely spider that climbs up and down from his web at perfect intervals. We also keep our treats in a chest that creaks and speaks in a spooky voice when opened. Keeps everyone on their toes!!
We will bake up some yummy halloween goodies and take the treats to our neighbours. Our community doesn’t celebrate the day so we try and make the best of it!
We are already in the Halloween spirit, moreso than any other year even. We began with playing Halloween games and reading spooky stories, and now we are focusing any spare energies into planning what we could make, bake, or decorate.
My youngest son would absolutely love this prize. He has wanted to subscribe to one of the magazines for a while now, and this would be a great chance for him to develop his reading skills as he has difficulty reading sometimes.
Thanks for creating a great contest with a nice prize pack specifically designed to inspire Halloween creation with the kids!
We will be going to a Halloween party dressed as the little mermaid and a pumpkin :). Then we’ll be having a Halloween story time party with our friends during a play date
We are baking pumpkin cookies and kids are going trick-or-treating of course and have a party at their school!
We will be participating in our church’s Trunk o’ Treat night for fun and a safe evening (plus less walking,lol)
We’ll be decorating the yard and heading out to local events the weekend before Halloween to get in the mood. We also have about 150 kids at our door every year so just getting treats and goodies ready for that is an event in and of itself! Can’t wait to carve our pumpkins!!
For Halloween this year, i will be staying home to hand out treats while my husband takes our daughter around the neighborhood. We are also attending a Halloween family dance at the school.
We love Halloween and my son is looking forward to trick or treating the most. I love to see everyone’s decorations. We plan to carve a pumpkin and go trick or treating.
We are reading a bunch of Halloween books as well as making some creepy snacks.
We are going on a very non-halloweeny trip – so my kids are sort of missing out this year – but they have some pretty heavy food allergies, and my oldest has Autism so Halloween is a challenging day anyway. We do swap candy for a toy with the sugar fairy each year – they love that.
This year my husband let the boys decorate the outside of the house….they didn’t do very much damage but there is a whole lot of caution tape and spiders!!! I usually carve a pumkin with holes and put rubber rats in them poking out (the kids love it) the boys get there own pumkin to carve and it is there own creation. We are in the process of chosing what they want to dress up as. We had a trial subscription to OWL and my son LOVED it. This is a great prize. Fingers crossed!!
We’ve decorated the house inside and out – kids are such enthusiastic helpers! 🙂 Costumes are ready to go and I usually try and bake treats for them – this year I am going to make red velvet spider cupcakes and the usual Halloween shaped cookies. I love theme baking – it’s so much fun. Usually I hand the candies out and hubby takes the kids but lately I have been taking the kids out – my daughter really likes to go far! Usually the week before Halloween, we take walks around the neighbourhood to check out some of the cool decorations. Some that we have come across are quite scary! Last year, my son wouldn’t go down the other half of our crescent because of one house’s decorations (he’s 5) but my daughter wanted to specifically go there on Halloween to scare herself lol (she’s 9).
I am decorating for Haloween which gets my kids so excited for the big day to come.
got my 1 year olds costume ready and our plan is set for who we will visit (mostly family) and I think we will go simple with the decorations this year.
It’s my wedding anniversary on Halloween so we decorate lots! Both my husband and I get dressed up in costume with our two daughters and we take family photos on the front porch every year. I can’t wait!! Best day of the year!!
We always carve a pumpkin and toast the pumpkin seeds. This is a tradition that my daughter looks forward to every year. She gets her own pumpkin and designs it herself. We are also big into the costume, being that she would love to be an actor when she grows up! She plans the look all year long and she is always winning the most creative costume at her school party. Last year she was bloody mary and this year she plans on being a cat. The variety of ideas astounds me!
We decorated the outside of the house today (verrrrry spoooky) and have had the inside decorated since last week (the girl is VERY keen on Halloween!). We’ll also bake some cupcakes and decorate them with Halloween colours. And carve a pumpkin or two. R (at 5) is going as Harry Potter, I’ll be Professor McGonigal and dad is going as a dementor.
Baking spooky cupcakes, craving a couple of pumpkins, decorating the house. We love Halloween. A favorite at our house.
We are all dressing up — as the “where is waldo” family. Even the dog is dressing up with us!
love carving pumpkins
We kicked off the Halloween festivities last night by watching & listening to some Halloween tunes on Youtube! My little guy giggled & giggled at the 5 Little Pumpkins song and I promised him that we would get 5 little pumpkins of our own to decorate!
My fiance and I bought 2 beautiful pumpkins…beautifully carved on the steps. I like to dress up when I pass out treats…the kids seem to enjoy it.
We first start off with decorating the inside of the house with lots of zombies stuff, but not too much it’s a love and hate relationship he has with them.. My (just turned) 7 yr. old is fascinated with zombies. We then will bake cupcakes and decorate them like frankenstein, bats etc. We also make our own goo and add red food colouring to make it look like blood… Since I don’t want him to go to bed scarred, we read our scary halloween books in the afternoon, which also gives us time to act the story out.
We do the above on the weekends before Halloween (about 3 weeks before every weekend)
On the day of, we wait till it starts to get dark and then we are off to “Trick or Treat”.. He eats some candy but not a lot.
The next day we will go for a walk after dinner to look at all the houses that our decorated that we didn’t get a chance to really see at night and we pick our favourite house.
I’ll tell you a secret my son picks our house every year as the winner… LOL I’ll take the win, thank son..
Happy Halloween everyone
Halloween at our house must be one of the biggest affairs! My husband loves this day and the weeks that creep up just before it! What I do mostly for all Halloweens, is follow my husband and switch some of his decorations with more kid sensitive (not as scary) ones. I try and do this the day before when he does not notice as much…he soon enough finds out but by then, I would have convinced him that the younger ones will cry! I let him have his fun…and then I creep to prevent any cries! It is always a hoot at our house on Halloween Night! Happy Halloween!
We have decorated the outside of the house and have started baking halloween cookies. In about a week we will get our pumpkin and have a family pumpkin carving night while watching haloween shows on tv.
We have a huge homemade Halloween display that we set up every year with tombstones made from scrap wood, a giant spider made of black garbage bags and a scary witch with a bubbling cauldron. It’s always a hit with kids!
We have my kids get all dressed up and their daddy takes them around to the houses. I am not well, so I stay home, also in case someone actually comes trick or treating here. I have spooky decor and all that, and treats for the kiddies, but where we live, not many come. One can always hope though. 🙂
We have already decorated the house for Halloween. Skeleton walkway lights, orange pumpkin lights, bats, witches, ghosts, ghouls, bloody prints on the windows and doors. Talking skeleton that lights up. I am on the search for some motion sensor scary things to put on the door so when the kids come to the door – they get a fright! I love Halloween. It’s one of my favourite seasons and love to decorate for it. My kids are all set costume wise – I start thinking about it in the summer. We go to some local malls to trick or treat days before the big day and then of course Halloween night my girls and their friends come over (it’s an annual – trick or treat thing together since they were toddlers). My friend and I are planning an adults only party which is another annual event. All that’s left to do is carve our pumpkins. Lots of fun!
The halloween decorations always seem so much more fun than other holidays. Love it
We’ll take the kids out trick or treating!
We’ve decorated our house, read some Halloween stories and watched some kid-friendly spooky movies. We’re also going to visit a Halloween-themed farm for a haunted hay ride and to pick our pumpkin from the field.
I am going to go to a halloween party and then on Halloween i will go trick or treating with my niece and nephew.
We are doing Halloween crafts, decorating our entry way and trick or treating of course!
we’re using stencils of bats, pumpkins, and ghosts and making a bunch of decorations.
we are busy planning costumes and making special treat bags for the few kids that visit us.
We bake up spooky goodies so we can enjoy them at home while we’re giving out all the goodies to everyone else, and the kids are back from trick or treating!
I am getting my house all Hallowed-Up and thinking about what spooky cupcakes I can bake this year
i baking spooky cupcakes for our annual ‘united way cupcake sale’
My son’s birthday is on the 30th so we are having a dress-up party with lots of spooky decorations and gross snacks!
I have a huge halloween party for the kids complete with a Halloween inspied menu and games
Believe it or not I am having cataract surgery on Oct.31st which will actually be a treat because I can hardly wait to get normal vision restored to that eye. I am looking forward to actually being able to see the kiddies in all their cute costumes.
My daughters school holds a fun family Halloween dance each year, so we will be attending that in costume and having a good time.
My husband and I took a trip and visited Morocco. We bought some traditional garb and play to wear it to our places of work on the big day!
I decorate for Halloween, pumpkin and skeleton lights, pumpkin wind sock, lighted pumpkin, various decorations I have picked up over the years. I have a cat and a pumpkin window decoration that has lights. All this for the two kids next door as I rarely have anyone else. I live in a rural place where it is too hard for most children to waunder the streets.
Been decorating the house and front porch, plus I’ll be taking the kids out trick or treating – then maybe having a few candy bars late that night : )
To get in the mood for Halloween I listen to the Musical Version of The War of The Worlds while driving down a dark country road.
We have Halloween out the wazzooo this year, but are very happy for it! Leading up to it we have been decorating the house & have just started watching movies with spoooooky treats! We will be attending the Halloween party at the Childrens Museum, and a childrens Halloween dance at a local club. On Halloween itself, we are having grandma & papa over for a spoooooky dinner of witch hands (chicken breasts done up) and monster punch! Followed of course by a big ol’ round of trick or treating!! Oh, and we have to carve a pumpkin in there somewhere! lol
Making cupcakes for my daughter’s class. Carving the pumpkin and getting my walk in while I take the kids out trick-or-treating.
I love everything about Halloween, but mostly I love trying out new recipe ideas for my kids classrooms. I love their reactions!!! I also love the month long array of scary movies to delight all ages, and don’t forget getting costumes ready! But what i really love is the amazing selection of candy!!!! Okay I know I love it all!!!!
We’re decorating our house with windows gels and some other hanging decorations this year. We’ll be making some special Halloween cookies for our own treats.
We decorate the outside and inside each year !
It’s my little girls 1st halloween so we are dressing up to hand out candy and visiting the library for there anual halloween party!
We are carving our pumpkins and handing out candy to the little ones, while DH has the big job of taking our 3 and 6 year old trick or treating!
I will bake Halloween cookies and try to carve a funky Disney type pumpkin this year!
We’ve got 4 or 5 parties to go to this year: At school, karate dojo, friends houses — it will be a blast.
We go all out! I am looking forward to baking, but I’ve got the decorations up and the candy bought already.
I love making treats for the kid’s class parties at school; such as spider cookies, jack-o-lantern cakes, and goulish hands.
Honestly, we don’t celebrate Halloween, but I would love to win the magazine subscription
Dressing up the house with the kids always puts me into the Halloween spirit!
My son and I like to watch scary movies together, leading up to Halloween.
I am handing out treats.
My favourite holiday is Halloween! Our front yard is all decorated. I always dress up. I like to go with a theme costume. My 2 year old son will be Chewbacca and I will be Princess Leia! My hubby LOVES Star Wars.
We all enjoy decorating our front yard for halloween. Then we come in and get washed up and make really cool halloween cookies!!
Today I cleaned out the flower bed, and then got all the halloween decorations out and got the front yard all ready for that great day – October 31.
Handing out treats to the little ones & hopefully watching a horror movie afterwards.
Our family will be getting our home ready for all the little ghosts & goblins by decorating the house. Carving pumpkins. Dressing the kids in their costumes and then out the door for some trick or treating!
HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
this year for Halloween, My bf is a DJ and he is putting on a birthday party/ halloween party for our friend that turns 60, it is a surprise, so it should be a spooky experience, lol thanks
I dress up to answer the door for the kids, and dress up the pups as well…they’re a Halloween hit! I decorate the front and I love it…sure look forward to it once a year! 😀
As soon as october rolls around, we plan our decorations for our front porch. We hang ghosts, scarecrows, monsters and the like from the verandah gingerbread. We make small paper bag ghosts to hang from the front bushes and strew cobwebs in between the branches. We have a display of pumpkins, squash and other fall vegetables and flowers on the porch, as well as a stuffed person sitting in a chair. When halloween trick or treaters start to appear, we put on a record of ghostly music. We also dress up ourselves to give out the candy.
My 5 year old son and I are going to make lots of kleenex ghosts to hang around the house, bake some ghoulish cookies, carve some pumpkins, and Trick or Treat until we drop! Too fun…
We bake cookies and purchase a couple of new decorations each year. Now that the kids are getting older we are heading towards a little bit scarier decorations than in past years
We love to dress up and have a good time with all our friends on Halloween, our town has the best Halloween dances.
We break out the Halloween cookie cutters and I spend an afternoon with my three boys, (ages 6, 3 and 1 yrs) baking cookies.
We will be having a spooktacular birthday party for my daughter. We will have all sorts of treats and games and have the house decorated up for a wonderful day of giggles and fun. Halloween is my favourite and I hope to pass my love of all things spooky to my kids.
We’re having a big halloween party that is fun – not scary for all our friends and their kids! My girls are so excited, they’ve got a count down going!
I will be taking my daughter trick-or-treating…she cannot wait to dress up. We have the new Spooky Buddies to watch as our Halloween film and lots of Halloween books. We will also be carving our pumpkin and baking Halloween cookies.
We don’t get trick or treaters at our place but I still decorated the house for my girls and we will be making spooky cake pop treats
We will be on holiday for the ten days leading up to Halloween, and then not arriving home untill around 11 pm on Halloween night LOL, but my girls are so thrilled about the holliday that they are OK with missing one Halloween night. Usually we have allot we do, with the neighbourhood, and our family. I also normaly handmake costumes, but this year there will be none 🙁
For Halloween my toddler and i have already visited a Pumpkin patch where we went on a tractor ride, had corn on the cob and hot dogs, bought a pie, went through a corn maze and had a blast!
We are going to decorate the house and already have the costumes for the kids ready! They are looking forward to getting lots of treats on Halloween!
I will be handing out the treats to trick or treaters! 🙂 My son is 12 so will be going out with his friends.
We always decorate our house up in a major way. We have pumpkin lights going down the path, tomb stones, witches, skeletons, and spooky music and that is just the outside of the house. We love Hallowe’en.
We decorate right after Thanksgiving weekend (so getting giant spiders out of box now)….we get the costume….and then we make plans to trick and treat with her friends. I have to say my parents really never let me go out on Halloween growing up and my Mom did not like costumes….so I actually dress up with her (I usually go as a witch , a zombie, or something along those lines). I can’t wait for Halloween!!!
We decorate our windows and take turns going out with our kids on Halloween night. We also make Halloween ghost cookies, and just enjoy the fall season. Thanks
We have our house decorated and each week in October we do a Hallowe’en craft. So far we’ve made bats by tracing our hands, and a bat card for Grandma & Grandpa, and silly monster faces. Today we’re making caramel apples. We have a few Hallowe’en books we read, and just got Garfield’s Spooky Tales to watch.
WE light candles & have lots of treats !
I’m gonna watch the Hallowe’en specials and eat treats.
We started out this weekend decorating small pumpkin gourds. My kids enjoy handing out the candy and are looking forward to doing so again this year!
Thanks for the great contest!
We love doing our “regular”, routine fall/Halloween activities. The kids look forward to the same thing year after year. Can’t blame them – I do too. We’ll start Oct. with picking apples, making pies, Fall Fair, Thanksgiving family dinner, pumpkin patch, planning the annual Halloween costumes, friends Halloween party, making caramel corn, decorating the house super spooky, making treat bags for school-mates and door knockers, enjoying Charlie Brown’s Great pumpkin patch, Halloween night in our neighbourhood, and finally……………….going through the kids candy bags to make sure that everything is safe by testing it first. Yummy!!!
Yah…………we love October. Can’t wait til next year!!!
Personally, I really don’t like Halloween. Even as a kid I wasn’t a huge fan of it lol. My kids though on the other hand LOVE it. So for them, we’re going to making Halloween decorations, and watching the classic Halloween shows on tv, eg: Garfield, Charlie Brown, etc.
Make Halloween Muffins and Punch !
I love halloween, we will be decorating inside and out, going to an adult halloween party with hubby, making my one son’s costume and trying to avoid the candy LOL
I love Hallowe’en and enjoy shopping for the treats. I decorate the door and windows and hand out all the goodies to the little ghosts and goblins.
Decorating, getting awesome costumes (months early) having the kids wear them out before Halloween. Getting more awesome costumes. Loading up on candy (weeks early) eating all the candy. Buying more candy to hand out 🙂 Yay for Halloween!
I decorate, I make fudge for my friends and grandchildren and I am here Halloweèen evening when all the kids show up.
We always carve pumpkins together and my husband dresses up as a pirate to take the kids out trick or treating. I stay home and make a big pot of hot chili for dinner for them to warm up with when they get back. I love to hand out the candy to the neighbourhood kids. My husband has a collection of scary songs to put on to get us in the spirit of Halloween. We always take our pumpkins to a special place after Halloween night…a road called the Shady Mile where all pumpkins go to decompose! Booooo….
going to an adult par-tay!
Hallowe’en rocks!!!!! Taking out the 2 kidlets early, a fairy and a super-hero :), then back home to hand out candy. Of course carving the pumpkin first!
Lots of house decorations – daughter MAKES me do it lol – lots and candy and lots of fun!!
Always decorate a bit and hand out tons of candy!!!
I am staying home and giving treats to the visiting children. My cats hate Halloween and run upstairs as soon as the front door bell rings. The cats sit on the top step and peer down at the little goblins.
Just handing out treats as usual
I’m planning a toddler Halloween party. We’re also reading lots of Halloween books, and doing lots of crafts in advance. This giveaway is FANTASTIC!
i’ve always loved hallowe’en but now, with kids, it takes on a whole new dimension! they want to carve almost every vegetable they can find and love to make their own costumes. i love watching holidays through their eyes!
For halloween we always take the girls out trick or treating but there is always lots of parties to go to before where my girls wear their costumes and help me make treats. They aren’t too much into the scare side yet, still a bit young 🙂 My hubby and I also get dressed up and join in on the fun!!
My husband always takes the day off. We dress the kids up, take them to the lunch hour parade at the school and then trick or treat after. I hand out the candy while my husband and the kids go around town!!!
We went to the pumppkin patch on the Saturday and choose our pumpkin. On Sunday we decorated the outside of the house. Now to put the finishing touches on costumes.
The kids and I enjoy making their costumes and decorating the house. We often go to “Boo at the Zoo” as well.
Going to a party on the weekend and then handing out candy for the tots on Halloween. I might even make an appy or desert for the party, Halloween themed!!!
We are decorating the outside of the house tonight! My 4 and 6 year old girls wear their costumes every day and have a Halloween countdown on! This is a great prize pack to win! We are also super fans of Chirp and Chickadee, though at our house they are called “mazagines”.
We always go to an all ages Halloween party at one of my oldest friend’s house. Last year activites included a scavenger hunt around the neighbourhood! On Halloween I will be taking my 2 tigers, baby monkey and teenage ghoul out for some good old fashioned trick or treating in the neighbourhood. Hoping the weather is mild like its been the last couple years!
This year hubby and I are going to a Halloween party and dressing up as Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf. Love the Halloween season!