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Yesterday morning I made the mistake of opening my 3-year old's closet to pull out a sweatshirt in front of her. She caught sight of the Minnie Mouse Halloween costume I found for her at a recent consignment sale and started begging to wear it to school. Fortunately, I was able to mollify her with the offer to carry her Halloween pumpkin bucket in the car to daycare.

And then, my 5-year old came home saying they've started talking about Halloween in kindergarten. Really? Do these kids need any additional hype for their favorite holiday of the year? At this rate, by Oct. 31 they will be tightly wound bundles of anticipation, ready to explode. I had been hoping this would be the first sane and enjoyable Halloween without a single girl bursting into tears from over-excitement!

I must admit, I love sharing the fun and history of Halloween with my kids. My own Halloween memories are some of the happiest of my entire childhood. But as a working mom, it's important that I keep the holiday in its place -- I have many other tasks to accomplish in the next six weeks!

Are you ready for Halloween? What are your favorite shortcuts and tips for making the holiday fun and easy?

Photo credit: Will Patton/Getty Images

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Comments
September 23, 2009 at 5:39 pm
(1) Dom :

I generally start talking about Halloween with the kids at school at the end of September, when the weather doesn’t allow us to go out as often we would like to nor as long as we would like to. It’s a great way to spend time, kids tell me the kind of costume they’d like to wear, the candies they like too, etc.
But I tend to not over-exciting them with this as it’s not necessary.
After Halloween, they give account of how fun the holiday was and we’re ready to start talking about Saint-Nicholas and Christmas by the end of November :)

September 27, 2009 at 10:40 pm
(2) Jim :

My kids have been talking about halloween for the past couple of weeks. We started to receive those catalogs in the mail with costumes in them and they have already picked out there costumes. Man when I was a kid my mother used to make our costumes.

October 4, 2009 at 3:52 pm
(3) karen :

My kids just love Halloween, we really make a night of it with decorations, food and dressing up. I found a great selection of beautiful costumes at

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