Our Halloween Traditions

Halloween always brings back many fond memories of great childhood fun. Now that Im a Mom I try recreate some of the fun and spook! Here are some of our favouite family fun Halloween traditions.



Making a barn brac!

I currently have mixed fruit (mostly raisins and sultanas) soaking in tea (Barry's of course!) and tomorrow or the following day I will make two barn brac's. Carrying on the tradtion my mam had, I always wrap a €2 and 2 €1 coins in shiney tin foil and mix them through the mixture. Theres nothing more exciting than biting into a hard coin and unwrapping the foil. Its the little things that always have the best reaction. The recipe I use can be found under the 'Country Cooking' Tab.


Pumpkin carving.

Like most families this is an activity we get great fun from in the days leading up to Halloween. As a child we used to grow our own pumkins so lots of experimenting of faces was done. Next Halloween I hope we too will have a smal harvest of our pumkins. Luckily there is a farm near us that grows pumpkins and we will go and pick and cut out our own pumkins. This year we are going to embrace an americian (i think!) idea of the blue pumpkin. As our DS is Dairy free we thought it might be nice to let others that may come to our house 'trick or treating' know that we have some dairy free halloween treats! We have in fact decided to make all our 'trick or treating' treats dairy free.

Halloween Games.

We LOVE halloween games.

Our top 3:

Coming in a No 1 everyones favourite: Apple Bobbing.

We like to spook it up a little and add some green food colouring to the water, we also add some monkey nuts and €2 coins to the dish with the apples. This way there is a different difficulty rating and makes the game enjoyable and competitive for every age! The nuts float on top so make them nice and easy for the little one, the apples add that bit of difficulty due to needing to bite in and the coins sink to the bottom making them the ideal target for the hard core bobbers!


No2 : Snap Apple.

We drive a nail (new and sterilised) through an apple, attach string to the top of the nail and hang from a door frame. We usually hang from the double doors to make sure there is lots of room. Hands are tied behind your back and each person gets 30 seconds to try take a bite for the apple. Its so much fun and by having an adult in charge of the varying height of the string this game is suitable for all the family, mam and dad too!

No3: Cutting the Cake.

But its a flour cake! Yes this a messy one but super fun. You pile up flour on a plate, in a much of a 'cake' shape as possible an place a cherry on top. Each person takes a turn at cutting a slice, any shape or size they desire. They gently seperate the cut slice from the rest of the cake, but leaving the flour on the cake. The person who cuts the slice whereby the cherry falls form the top is the loser and must put their face into flour! So simple yet so fun!

'Trick or Treating'

Yes, we are mean and do give some of the older kids 'tricks'. Ah isn't that what it's all about!!

This years favourite dairy free treat: A plastic glove, place a jelly at the tip of each finger and fill the rest with popcorn! Simple, effective and budget friendly!

Our favourite treat: This one was a roaring success when we discovered it as kids! A hard boiled egg, dipped in melted chocolatae! I know I know, how mean your thinking! But come on....all treats would be no fun!!


So while we have lots more Halloween ideas, including decorating and costume ideas I tried to keep this post as concise as possible. But do keep an eye on our  facebook and instagram pages for constant updates! This year we dont have a family theme for our costumes but should be fun none the less.

Hope you got some ideas from here, or reminded you of some of the childhood halloween games you too may have played and had forgotten.


Have a spooktacular Halloween everyone,

Stay safe,

Kerri and Orla xx

(Images are courtesy of google images)