Halloween, 2020 Style
On my oldest daughter's first few Halloween experiences, she had an amazing time trick-or-treating. Every year we visited a different place; a different neighborhood. And last year, it was her choice to dress up as Queen Elsa while passing out a handful of treats. We made sure that our front porch brought attention to the trick-or-treaters, but we didn’t get as many visitors like we did in the past — I guess it’s because most of the kids in my block are all grown up… Btw, you are never too old to trick-or-treat ;)
As for my family and I, we are definitely spending Halloween this year at home. Our plan is for one adult to be stationed in one room and the kids would enter to receive a surprise = room to room trick-or-treating! I went to Target a few days ago just to buy chocolate candies, party favors, and spiderwebs for decorations. Today is the last day of quarantining those items, and either tonight or tomorrow night my sister and I will be setting up the mini treat bags for the kids. This will be something I don’t want to forget so I’ll be taking lots of pictures and videos (I’ll try to remember to do that, haha!).
Now for this Halloween, there are restrictions particularly in Illinois. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) created guidelines for this Halloween to protect everyone from increasing their risk of contracting the virus and other communicable diseases. Along with properly wearing masks (excluding costume masks), social distancing, and practicing good hygiene, it is recommended to carry alcohol-based hand sanitizer, trick-or-treat only with household members, and wash your hands before and after consuming the candies. However, knowing that the virus can live for a specific duration depending on the material, I would personally recommend placing your treats on quarantine for a few days before consumption. Parents and caregivers, you can also hide those candies and give the kids treats from home in the meantime. For those that are passing out treats, IDPH also suggests you leave individually wrapped candies on a flat surface (e.g. table, stairs, walkways, etc) and are spaced out for each visitor. Of course you can go in the creative/inventive route and build a mini-slide or tunnel so that the treats slide into the visitor’s bag or pin them on a clothes line. Moreover, IDPH mentions about haunted houses, parties, pumpkin patches, what to do after celebrating, and more; so please click on this link to read further.
Besides the Halloween restrictions and recommendations that are put into place, if you have an account on the NextDoor app (I encourage you to create one if you don’t), a really cool feature is their Treat Map. This map allows neighbors to mark their own home based on how they are planning to celebrate Halloween, thus letting other neighbors to view which homes to visit. I think this is a wonderful function that they implemented, including the benefits of exploring your area and getting to know your neighbors.
However you are going to celebrate Halloween, be safe and enjoy! Post a comment below if you want to share what you are doing differently this time around.
<3 Sole
