Frugal Halloween Fun

We've been busy having some free family fun! On Friday night, we went on what's known in our neighbourhood as "The Night Hike". This is a free event that has been going on for quite a few years and is a much anticipated event in our household! The local school decorates a wooded nature trail with jack-o-lanterns made by the kids. It is *very* cool to hike through a forest full of glowing jack-o-lanterns, even if, like this year, it's freezing cold and pouring rain. The event is so popular that there were still crowds of people participating, despite the abysmal weather. A frugal aspect of The Night Hike (besides that it's free) is that since my hubby always volunteers to help clear all the pumpkins from the trail at the end, he gets to bring home as many "unclaimed" jack-o-lanterns as he wants (usually somewhere around a dozen). So, we always have a *very* spooky looking house on Halloween night, despite the fact that we usually only purchase two pumpkins of our own.

On Saturday night (despite a distinct lack of improvement in the weather), we attended the Haunted Halloween event at Westfield Heritage Village. Again, lots of fun (in this case, spooky old-fashioned creepy kinds of fun). We had bundled up well, but were still eager to make hot chocolate and popcorn when we got home!! Of course, the popcorn was air-popped and the hot chocolate was of the cocoa-and-sugar-in-hot-milk variety (which I think tastes a lot better than anything out of the expensive little packages anyways).