Our Halloween traditions: how to make them easier on Mama?

I was inspired to try and take the "Easy Way Out" this Halloween. It's one of my family's favorite holidays (not my favorite, but the kids and my husband love it) and we have traditionally celebrated the heck out of it. But, let's face it - it's a LOT of work for the Mama. Being the holiday wizard in charge of making sure the family gets their special times and memories is yet another chore that falls on my shoulders.

I didn't have it in me this year (I really am barely keeping my head above water with all the work and different hats I'm wearing), so I couldn't imagine sitting down and sewing costumes. I proposed that we just go to the Halloween store and buy costumes this year, and the kids LOVED that idea. Although it meant shilling out hard-earned money for cheap crap, the trade-off was that I didn't need to sit up all night long trying to find the time to sew costumes. I don't know that it's the right choice for every year, but for this year it felt right.

But then I proposed that we just buy our pumpkins at the grocery store, instead of picking them out at the pumpkin patch farm. They already got to go to the patch earlier this month, for a homeschool group field trip, and pick out small pumpkins to bring home. So why not just buys our big carving pumpkins at the grocery store?

TOTAL MUTINY. It's not Halloween if we don't get our pumpkins at the farm! So we squeezed a trip in, and they were happy with that. And now I know which traditions matter to them and which don't.