How to Make Halloween 2021 Fun, Safe and Totally Awesome

Creative and fun ideas for our second pandemic Halloween

Wow, did we think we’d still be here in the pandemic trenches for Halloween 2021? We have definitely made some progress, with vaccines, in-person school and the return of some kids’ activities.

But with vaccines for younger kids still a little ways off, we are planning some adjustments to our trick-or-treating and spooky fun. But we are definitely not giving up Halloween.

Whether you’re planning to go out or stay in, we’ve rounded up a big candy bowl full of ideas for making Halloween 2021 awesome.

Use the arrows above the image for going-out and at-home ideas.

If you’re going out

Traditional trick-or-treating is outside, everyone can wear masks and no one needs to get too close to people outside their family. We can absolutely pull this off while keeping ourselves and our community safe.

Our family’s usual Halloween game plan involves descending on the local business district where swarms of costumed kids parade around and demand free treats. That’s not happening this year. Instead, we plan to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood — with some tweaks. For an awesome and safe experience. try coordinating with your neighbors. Fostering a united community at a fraught moment and in the name of more candy? Yes, please!

Touch-free trick-or-treating ideas:

• Rally your block or your HOA into organizing neighborhood trick-or-treating. Designate one side of the street for walking one way and the other side for the other way, so you’re not bumping into other families. Agree that only one family at a time stops in front of a house. (If you’re in the city of Seattle and live on a non-arterial street, you can even apply to close your block for the evening!)
• Build a candy chute out to the street with a long piece of PVC pipe running from your door out to the sidewalk. Spray paint it black and wrap it with festive lights if you like. For the big day, wear gloves and a mask to send contact-free candy down to the chute to trick-or-treaters. Bonus points for leaving hand sanitizer at the bottom of the tube.
• Definitely skip grubby kid fingers pawing through a big bowl of candy. Try clipping candy to the branches of a tree, a hedge or a fence in your yard. Or you can set out individual candy-filled snack bags so kids can grab one and go. Or set up a treat table at the end of your driveway and scatter candy on it. You can watch from the porch, enjoy the costumes and refresh the candy as needed.
• Make your yard into a cardboard graveyard, and sprinkle light sticks and candy around so kids can run through and grab their treats.

More outdoor ideas:

• Organize a socially distant costume parade. If you live on a pedestrian-friendly street, close down the street so the kids can strut their stuff, six feet apart, while everyone “oohs” and “aahs” at all the cute and clever costumes.
• Go all out decorating your yard! Invite your neighbors to join you in tricking out their houses, Halloween-style. Make your street a Halloween version of Candy Cane Lane and invite everyone to vote for the spookiest house on the block.
• Or just dress up and walk around the neighborhood waving to people. Candy isn’t even the main attraction for us — it’s the excitement of showing off our costumes and seeing everyone else’s.
• Do a Halloween goodie bag exchange with friends and neighbors. Drop off pre-packed treat bags, everything individually wrapped and sealed, at their doorstep for a sweet surprise.

 

 

If you’re staying in

If going out or organizing something among your neighbors is not your jam again this year, that’s cool too. Try one or more of these at-home ideas.

• Leave the porch light off and stay in for pizza and a scary movie with just your kids — easy and safe. You’re not obligated to open the door to random people knocking. Having the light off is your signal.
• Set up different rooms or spaces of your house for indoor trick-or-treating. Have an adult in costume (or a dressed-up stuffie!) wait behind closed doors or cupboards with treats and let the kids go room to room, knocking on doors.
• Build a haunted gingerbread Halloween house. You can buy a kit from Trader Joe’s or Costco, or make your own with a box of graham crackers, store-bought frosting, candy corn and other sweet things. Structural integrity is always the hardest part, but the good news here is if your house is crooked or wobbly, it’ll just look that much spookier!
• Do a haunted candy hunt! (Think Easter egg hunt.) Hide candy around the yard or around the house, wait ’til dark, turn off all the lights and get your kids hunting by flashlight. Decorate with lots of faux spider webs to make it extra creepy.

• 

  A piñata with your pod is a fun way to distribute candy. You can buy a ready-made piñata at a party store, Target or online, but it’s more fun to make your own. All you need is a balloon, newspaper torn into strips, flour and water. The scariest piñata? A coronavirus piñata, of course.
• Play costume charades with your family. The first person has three minutes to raid the closet or dress-up box to come up with a unique costume. The person who guesses what the costume is gets to go next.
• Hold a candy scavenger hunt in your house with a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket to find. Hide candy around the house, including one golden bar with the winning ticket. What’s the golden ticket good for? Maybe the winner gets to decide what’s for dinner for a week? (Winner must choose something other than candy!) Or designate a prize that works for you. Hide a winning ticket for each of your kids to ward off a battle.
• If candy is all your kids want, buy a big variety bag and dump it out on the living room floor. That’s the whole point of Halloween for kids, isn’t it? We promise no one will complain.

More fall fun

October culminates in the candy extravaganza that is Halloween, but it’s also the ideal month for all kinds fall family fun.

• Pluck your perfect pumpkin out of the field at pumpkin patches for Seattle-area families, or pumpkin patches for South Sound-area families. (Just remember at most patches you need to book your visit ahead of time.)
• Peer into local rivers, creeks and streams to see if you can spot salmon spawning. Check our guides to salmon spots around Seattle and the Eastside and salmon spots around the South Sound.
• Take a family nature walk among beautiful fall leaves on kid-friendly trails around Seattle and the Eastside, or around the South Sound.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2020, for our first pandemic Halloween. Who would have guessed we’d have another one? Let’s not make it three.