If I’m being perfectly honest, Halloween was never something that was enormously important to me as a kid. I remember feeling relieved in some ways when I aged out of the whole costume-and-trick-or-treating thing. But there’s something about your own … Read More
Welcome to LPF Weekly Deals! These are our favorite, tried-and-true travel gear and home life items that have stood the test of time. With 7 people in our home or when we travel, we try to only purchase items that … Read More
A few years ago, I started printing out a photo of our yearly family Halloween costume. I loved seeing them in print, and I knew I’d forget if I put it off, so I started doing it right after Halloween … Read More
I have one sister and who is nearly 5 years younger than me. Though we’re not super close in age, we’ve always been fairly close to each other, even through different seasons of life. So I knew before even having … Read More
Welcome to LPF Weekly Deals! These are our favorite, tried-and-true travel gear and home life items that have stood the test of time. With 7 people in our home or when we travel, we try to only purchase items that … Read More
It’s no secret we see a lot of benefits from family travel. And most of the time, we try to time that travel to coincide with school breaks. But occasionally, that doesn’t work. Here’s a little bit more about the … Read More
Welcome to LPF Weekly Deals! These are our favorite, tried-and-true travel gear and home life items that have stood the test of time. With 7 people in our home or when we travel, we try to only purchase items that … Read More
One of the most common questions we get is how we manage family travel on a budget. With 5 kids, it definitely requires a bit more planning and prep than just traveling as a couple. To be honest, we were … Read More
A couple years ago, we had the amazing opportunity to travel for 10 weeks during parental leave for our 4th baby. It was the first time Dan had ever had paternity leave, and we were thrilled to use it for … Read More
This post is sponsored by Camping World. All opinions are my own. When we first started RVing during the pandemic to go see high-risk family members, we knew working from our RV would be necessary. We needed a reliable internet … Read More
With 7 of us traveling, we try to pack light with a family. That means that our luggage for families also needs to be lightweight! We definitely don’t want to waste a bunch of weight on the luggage itself. We … Read More
Our older daughter is 9!! It’s a little wild to me that she only has one more year before she hits double digits. In some ways, it felt tricky to find some terrific 9 year old girl birthday gifts. She’s … Read More
If I’m being perfectly honest, Halloween was never something that was enormously important to me as a kid. I remember feeling relieved in some ways when I aged out of the whole costume-and-trick-or-treating thing. But there’s something about your own kids being over the moon about it that makes me feel super excited, too! So I knew I wanted to come up with a few traditions around the holiday that were fun for me, too. And my favorite is our annual family Halloween dinner.
For the past several years, we’ve done a family Halloween dinner a few days before the holiday itself. While it’s fun to have a meal together that day, it always feels like we’re in a rush to get out the door. Plus, we’ve gotten Boorito from Chipotle on Halloween night for close to a decade!
So we started doing a special dinner a few days in advance (usually the weekend before if Halloween falls on a weekday). It’s such a fun way to get excited for the big day!
Since this was something I wanted our family to do for a long time, I knew I needed to keep it fairly simple and manageable. We start by setting an easy but festive table, with tall candles and perhaps some cotton spider webs acting as a runner down the tabletop. We also set out Halloween dinnerware. We used to have melamine Halloween plates, but those fell apart this year. So we’ll probably do something like this and set them on top of our normal white plates.
Then we try to set the mood with a few other basics. We always get dry ice – the effect can’t be beat! We usually just pour root beer over it. We also dim the lights and play some spooky music over the Google Nest mini.
This is the most fun part! I love how the food goes beyond just sustenance and becomes part of the decor and atmosphere! It’s so fun. Here are some favorites of ours for our Halloween dinner:
Some other very cute ideas that we haven’t done before are:
And that’s about it! Nothing super complicated but really so much fun. My kids think it’s the best meal of the year!
Have you done a Halloween meal like this? I’d love to hear what is standard fare in your home!
