Halloween is a great time of the year to spend some extra time with the kids. Often my kids don’t go out to trick or treat anymore. We tend to stay in the house and enjoy special family time. If you will be staying indoors on Halloween, here are a few ideas on free things that the whole family can enjoy.

*Have a Family Fright Fest night. Numerous television stations play Halloween-themed marathons on the night before Halloween and on Halloween night. Pop some popcorn, grab a few blankets and everyone can gather around the TV and watch some all-time favorite movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

*Family Activity Night – The web is filled with sites where you can find Halloween printable coloring sheets. You can find mummy masks, bats, Frankenstein and more. Some of my favorite sites to visit are TheKidzPage.com and Kaboose.com.

*Make Halloween sugar cookies. You can search the web if you need a recipe but you really only need sugar, baking soda, flour, baking powder and butter. Have fun with the shapes of the cookies. If you have some food coloring hanging around the house, you can add that to the mixture to produce some pretty fun looking cookies.

*Dress Up Night – My daughter absolutely loves to play in my clothes and shoes. Every now and then I will let her try on a few of my clothes and model them for the family. We always take pictures and look back later on with fond memories. An added twist to this is we let our baby dress up in things we find around the house (old costumes, hand-me-downs, etc). When trick or treaters come to the house, we let him give out the candy.

*Arts and Crafts – I have found tons and tons of free craft ideas for Halloween. Some are as simple as making a black cat out of a paper plate. However if you are really adventurous, there are many more advanced craft ideas as well. One of my favorite sites AllCrafts.net has a balloon spider, a glowing crystal ball, cheesecloth ghosts and more.

No matter what you decide to do on Halloween night, be safe and have fun!