12 Ways To Celebrate Halloween at Home That Are Way More Fun Than You’d Expect

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Whether you spend it watching spooky movies, eating your body weight in candy, dressing up as your favorite horror movie character, or carving a pumpkin, Halloween is an excellent way to start family traditions that your family can look forward to, carry on for future generations, and never forget.

Better yet, you don’t have to leave the house to have fun at Halloween. You can play games, do various activities, and create traditions without leaving the house. In preparation for next Halloween, we’ve compiled a list of 12 ways to celebrate Halloween at home. We’ll show you everything you can do to have a spooktacular Halloween with your family and friends.

Decorate Your House

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Let’s start with one of the most enjoyable ways to kickstart the Halloween celebrations at home. No matter your age, something is exciting about decorating the house with themed decorations. However, turning your place into a haunted house seems even more fun at Halloween, when we can go crazy with fake spider webs, ghostly figures, skulls, eyeballs, and other spooky decorations.

Orange and purple lights are a must to bring more Halloween vibes to your house. Don’t forget to decorate your front door and lawn with ghosts, ghouls, and zombies. If you want to turn Halloween decorating into a challenge, you could give each family member a room to decorate and then judge each room to see who decorated the best. The runner-up can be sacrificed to Jack O’Lantern.

Get Dressed Up

Let’s face it, no Halloween celebrations are complete until you’ve got your Halloween costume on. Whether it be some simple devil horns or a full-body vampire suit, you must dress up at Halloween to keep in spirit with the celebrations. One of the best things about getting dressed up at Halloween is the diversity of costumes and joining a costume contest.

We also love how it allows people to unleash their creativity. You don’t have to get inspired by the Addams Family and go as a vampire, a ghost, or the devil – you can dress up as whoever you like. At Halloween parties I’ve been to, I’ve bumped into Donald Trump, the Flintstones, and even Yoda from Star Wars. The opportunities are endless, so have fun with it. You could make it a competition by ranking everyone’s costumes.

Carve a Pumpkin

One of, if not the biggest, Halloween traditions worldwide is pumpkin carving, or Jack O’lantern carving, as it is referred to in many parts of the world. Pumpkins play an enormous role in autumn and Halloween. Without them, the spooky season wouldn’t be the same. You must leave the house to buy a pumpkin, but you can carve it at home.

With that in mind, dig out your carving supplies and decorating kits, buy a pumpkin, and get to work scooping its brains out. Once again, you can turn this Halloween activity into a competition by judging who has the best design. Don’t just carve your pumpkin, either. Decorate it with paint, stickers, and slime.

Share Ghost Stories

One of my favorite ways to celebrate Halloween is to turn off all the lights, light some candles, sit in a circle with family and friends, and share Halloween ghost stories. Suppose you have a fireplace; light that, too, for extra atmosphere and spooky horror movie campfire vibes. Your guest will feel spooked out in no time.

When it comes to telling your stories, there are endless possibilities to give you goosebumps. You can read straight from a horror storybook, make up your own stories as you go along, share scary actual crime cases, and share any paranormal encounters you or your guests have experienced. How scary your stories are will likely depend on your company. We don’t want to scare the children too much.

Bake Halloween-Themed Treats

Admittedly, baking is a fun activity to do with your family any time of the year. However, baking cookies, biscuits, and cupcakes at Halloween is even more entertaining. Whether you’re making ghost-shaped cookies or spider muffins, don’t be afraid to get messy with colorful icing, hundreds and thousands, and edible eyes and spiders. The trick-or-treaters will love them.

You don’t have to stop there, either. You could also go crazy with it by making Halloween-themed jellies loaded with Halloween sweats, horror movie-themed dinners, and creepy snacks. If you’re feeling extra creative and you have a favorite recipe, you could use the pulp from the pumpkins you carved to make some delicious food items, such as pumpkin cake, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin bread.

Make Halloween Cocktails

If you don’t have children but still want to get in the Halloween spirit at home, invite your friends for a cocktail evening. When we say Halloween cocktails, we expect you to go crazy with blood-colored drinks, spooky decorations, and specific Halloween themes. Themes you can follow include horror movies, Halloween characters, and Halloween colors.

Hold a competition to make the evening more exciting and see who can decorate their cocktail the best. We expect pumpkin-shaped glasses, cocktails served with gummy worms, and bright colors. Oh, and of course, your cocktail has to taste good. You can do this activity with children, too, by making mocktails.

Watch Scary Movies

It doesn’t have to be Halloween for you to grab some popcorn and do a scary movie marathon, but it’s undoubtedly the best time of the year to do so, especially when most of the year’s new scary movies come out around Halloween. A scary movie night is a quick, easy, and entertaining way to celebrate Halloween without much planning.

There are thousands of movies to choose from across various platforms and streaming services. We recommend Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ for the best horror movies. These platforms offer horror movies in abundance. Some of my favorites include Halloween, the Silence, and Hocus Pocus. The Nightmare Before Christmas is also a classic, but we’re still unsure if that’s a Halloween or Christmas movie.

Play Halloween Games

No matter your age, playing Halloween games is an excellent way to have fun during the Halloween celebrations. It’s a surefire way to create lasting memories, introduce new traditions, and ensure your guests or family have lots of fun. There are countless games, so you’ll never run out of things to do.

Better yet, many Halloween games you can play at home don’t cost much to play. For example, you only need a large bowl or bucket, water, and some apples to play Apple Bobbing. Other exciting games you can play at Halloween include Witches Ring Toss, Pin the Spider on the Web, and Ghost in the Graveyard.

Go on a Halloween-Themed Scavenger Hunt

The next Halloween-themed activity on our list is a scavenger hunt. Scavenger hunts are an excellent way to keep young kiddos entertained for longer. For those who don’t know what one is, a scavenger hunt is a game in which an organizer prepares a list of specific items or clues for the hunters to seek.

In this instance, the organizer will hide Halloween-themed items around the house and in their backyard for the players to find. Once the items have been hidden, the players are given a list of what they need to find. Halloween-themed items you might hide include small pumpkins, toy bats, ghost figures, spider webs, and skeletons. Make sure you get some prizes for when the players find all the items.

Have a Halloween Disco

You don’t have to leave the house to have a Halloween party this October. You can easily create your Halloween disco by decorating the house, clearing a space, and playing Halloween-themed music. For the ultimate Halloween disco, throw on a Halloween playlist, throw on your costume, and invite your friends over for a dance-off.

Alternatively, keep your disco private and have a dance-off with your children. There are plenty of epic tunes you can play at Halloween, and dancing along to them helps you burn off the excessive amount of sweets you’ll likely consume. Noteworthy Halloween tunes include ‘Thriller,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ and ‘Monster Mash.’ You can link this to your games evening by playing Musical Statues.

Make Arts and Crafts

If you’re struggling to keep your children entertained during the day, keep them engaged for hours with kid-friendly arts and crafts. From hand painting spiders and rock painting to Halloween masks and jack-o-lantern making and drawing, there are many ways to keep kids entertained through arts and crafts.

Admittedly, you’ll need a few supplies to do arts and crafts, but there’s a good chance you already have many of the things you need because it’s unlikely your child has never done them before. Arts and crafts is also an excellent way to decorate your house because you can use your child’s decorations to turn your home into a spooktacular Halloween wonderland. Just make sure you don’t use glitter. IYKYK.

Have a Halloween Grazing Board Competition

This last Halloween activity is perfect for adults hosting a Halloween party from their home. Grazing boards are an easy and aesthetically pleasing way to present food, and they’re currently trendy. A quick look at TikTok reveals that many people are hosting grazing board competitions with friends and family.

To join in with the trend, tell everyone in your group to create a grazing board based on a specific theme. For example, the theme might be horror movies, pumpkin patch or Halloween colors. Each person must bring a grazing board to the party in keeping with that theme. This activity is excellent fun, and it stops you from having to buy all the food for your party.