Halloween is just around the corner. It can be a really exciting time, especially for the little ones in our lives. However, it can also be a bit stressful. We have found a few fabulous things that could help with planning your festivities a little bit easier.
Dressing Up with Sensory Issues
One of the things that can be a huge issue at Halloween for little ones in particular, is dressing up. If you or your child has sensory issues this can be that much harder. Whilst it is super fun and exciting, some of the costumes can just irritate, be uncomfortable and feel wrong. Add to that all of the walking when you go Trick or Treating and it can be a literal nightmare.
When thinking about walking though, we came across these frightastic Crocs that are perfect for the kids this year. Crocs are so comfortable, they seem to just envelope your feet in this firm, yet airy sensation. Easy to pop on and with the ability to have the strap in front or behind, it makes them perfect for those of us that have sensory difficulties. They are great for walking in, so would be brilliant Trick or Treating, adding a fiendish touch to any costume. Making Halloween just a little bit less stressful!
When you add to the mix these cute little offerings from Crocs, they are terrifyingly terrific for Halloween! You could of course opt for their pumpkin coloured Crocs to spice it up even more.
These Incredible I Am Bat Crocs are £39.99 (including Bat Wings) and are available from Crocs website.
Finishing the Look
With the feet sorted it’s time to look at finishing touches. For us sometimes, these can be the things we forget about. Then on the night we get frustrated that we did! Life can easily get in the way, so to ease your mind and help you remember a few bits, we thought we would add this in here.
Finishing touches can be anything from jewellery, face paints, make up or perhaps the perfect bag. At The Wonderment we always go all out at Halloween and have been known to make extra items such as Winifred’s Book from Hocus Pocus or Things from The Addams Family.
The one thing we always, and we mean always forget, is nail varnish! This can finish any costume off and of course you need the right colour. This year we have picked Liquorice by Benecos.
The rich jet black shade is gloriously ghoulish and just the right accent we need. Not only is this polish 20-FREE, meaning it is free from20 harmful and synthetic ingredients, it’s also vegan. It is packed with lovely ingredients that are actually good for your nails, so they feel great. Usually we get a bit fed up with nail polish as it takes forever to dry and apply, but Benecos have made this one so it dries quickly. Our favourite aspect though has to be the brush. It is wider than your standard polish brushes and makes applying that much easier!
Benecos Nail Polish is available from their site for just £5.75
Ambient Lighting
Atmosphere can make or break Halloween. Especially if you are celebrating at home. Lighting can have the most wonderous effect on us as people anyway, it is one of the reasons we explore in this article. It can also help those who are neurodivergent, again tapping into the sensory side of things, making the environment less overwhelming.
There are a ton of ways that you can adjust the lighting in your home. We wanted to take a look at colour changing lightbulbs this year, or Smart Bulbs. These are bulbs that plug into your normal fittings and then can be controlled either by a remote, or an app on your phone.
We recently gave 4lite Smart Bulb a go. o a tricky start when trying to install it, because the app would not connect to the internet. However, after some frustration and a little determination we figured it out. The great thing about 4lite is the ability to set the physical switch to do two things. So, you can have a daylight setting if you switch it on and leave it, but switch it off and on again and you can have a Halloween effect.
Yes, there is a specific Halloween setting, (among others such as Christmas or a lovely sunset). We also LOVED the fact that the app has a plant growth setting, one for focus and even one to use so when creating art you see the colours in their true form, not effected by the artificial lighting. The daylight setting will make a difference coming into the Winter months, but being able to create ambience and atmosphere is a devilishly great addition to our Halloween! With over 16 million colour choices or 64,000 hues of white we are astounded and you can control the bulb with your voice through Alexa too!
You can find out more about 4lite Smart Bulbs on their website!
Trick or Treat
Of course we can’t have Halloween without some yummy treats. These can come in many forms, whether they are home made, shop bought or a combination of the two. Shop bought can be less stressful, but there are so many choices!
In this day and age, what with Covid being a part of our lives, one important thing to remember if you are giving out treats this Halloween, is to get individually wrapped sweets. There are a quite a few choices, but our favourites are ones from our childhood. Sweets we remember loving as we grew up and they taste delicious!
Swizzels! They have a bunch of different options depending on the amount of sweets that you would like. A great one if just handing out a few sweets this year is their Sweet Shop Favourites. They are amazing! Coming in a handy pouch that has a handle and weighing in at a fabulous 450g the Sweet Shop Favourites is perfect for handing out your treats.
This bag is packed full of all the sweets kids love from Squishies, Love Hearts and Drumstick Lollies to Fizzers, Refreshers and Parma Violets. You simply can’t go wrong.
You can buy the Swizzels Sweet Shop Favourites Pouch from all good retailers for £3.50!
