Week 25 - A Spooky and Green Halloween
I am the first to admit I love Halloween but not the overtly commercial Halloween that has appeared in the UK over the last few years. For me (and the boys) it's all about the ghoulish food, the dressing up and the not having to dust away the cobwebs in the weeks preceding Halloween! It is NOT about heading to the shops to buy stuff from the shelves that bear ever increasing amounts of plastic Halloween merchandise that we actually do not need. Here then are the 7 ways I have a Spooky and GREEN Halloween.
7 great ways to have a Green Halloween
1. Pumpkins
Instead of buying a pumpkin for Halloween why not grow your own. If you can't grow one then aim to buy a locally produced one from a small producer such as a farm shop or farmer's market. Don't forget you can make soup from the flesh and roast the seeds and when it's all over you can compost your pumpkin remains. If you are growing a pumpkin why not also grow some purple carrots which, when added to a pumpkin stew, give it the macabre look of containing fingers.
2. Make your own Halloween Costumes
Kids (and a lot of adults too) love to dress up at Halloween but before you head to the shops to buy a new costume that is most probably made from synthetic materials and imported from afar think what else you can do. Why not swap costumes with friends or make something exiting from your old clothes. Your local charity shop is a great place to buy cheaper clothes if you need to cut some up for a zombie costume ... with ketchup for blood of course!
3. Trick or Treat
You don't need to buy a mass-produced plastic bucket or suchlike for your children's hoard of sweets. Instead look round the house for something suitable which, if needs be, you can decorate beforehand. If you are providing goodies for trick or treaters, rather than buying plastic wrapped sweets, make you own treats such as sweets or small cakes and wrap them in tissue or greaseproof paper.
4. Have an Electricity Free Halloween
Make the evening even more spooky by using no lights in the house. Light it with beeswax candles rather than paraffin-based ones.
5. Make your own Halloween Decorations
Get crafty with the papier machée, use horticultural fleece as a table cloth, create cardboard bats to hang from the ceiling ... just be as creative as you can. But if you are really no good at crafting or struggling to find the time then look out for local producers making sustainable Halloween decorations from natural materials on such places as Etsy.
6. Halloween Food
I think this is my favourite part of Halloween, eating spooky food. The supermarkets shelves will be groaning under the weight of over-packaged, high sugar foods so for a green Halloween give these a miss and make your own devilish dinner. How about preparing a Witch's stew served in a pumpkin shell, followed by these creepy tombstone buns?
7. Attend a Local Halloween Event
Has your local cinema got a scary show you can watch or does your nearest country park run spooky night-time walks or events? Attending these local events helps support your local community which is great for everyone.
You can see even more tips here from Healthy Green Savvy and Skip the Bag.
How do you plan to celebrate Halloween? Have you any ghostly, ghoulish or suitably scary food, costumes or decorations planned?
Some great ideas. We always pick our own pumpkins at our local farm shop, and I'd love to have a go at growing our own. I love the no lights idea. Thanks for sharing. #TheList
ReplyDeleteDo have ago and growing pumpkins - they are not that difficult and a great veg for kids to see grow.
DeleteGreat tips. Halloween was always very green when I was a kid, not like these days! Thanks for linking up to #Thelist x (it would be great if you could add our badge or link back)
ReplyDeleteOops sorry, I meant to add your badge - I'll do it now.
DeleteGreat tips here. Pleased to say my daughter is trying to come up with some ideas for eco-friendly treats for the trick or treaters that visit us. So far she fancies making mini green meringue monsters with faces made of melted chocolate. I quite like the idea of drawing pumpkin faces on satsumas, bit less work involved!
ReplyDeleteYes, Halloween is about so much more than cheap plastic costumes and decorations, and especially more than those silly plastic cobwebs that spring up everywhere before Halloween. Gets me every time, grr... so much for pointless plastics.... #goinggreen
ReplyDeleteHalloween is a relatively new idea here in Denmark, only adopted in the last 10 years or so - and the Danes way of celebrating is much more sustainable than a full blown American Halloween, although I miss the community part of the celebrating in the States. Those tombstone cookies are adorable and we always try to buy our pumpkins from a local grower - easier and easier to do as Denmark adopts fall festive fun. Great ideas. Cheers from Copenhagen. #Goinggreen
ReplyDeleteWe don't really do Halloween but we did use up our entire pumpkin from flesh, seeds and skin so nothing was wasted at least!
ReplyDeleteSome good tips here!
Slightly delayed comment from October #goinggreen