Porter House: A New Halloween Tradition

I was more than excited to have the family over last Saturday to officially begin a tradition that I hope we keep for a lifetime or at least for a very long time to come. Every year for Halloween I would like the family to get together to have dinner, carve/decorate pumpkins and end the night by going through all the Halloween toys we plan to donate to the Children’s Hospital for their annual Halloween Carnival.

When I was pregnant, I began thinking about traditions I wanted to start once Preston was born and I wanted them to involve helping or giving to others. My original thought for Halloween was to have the family over for dinner and to spend the evening making candy bags for the kids at the Children’s Hospital. But when I called the hospital to find out what the rules and regulations were for providing donations she said that unfortunately the kids can’t have candy due to their dietary needs but that they could use toys and trinkets to use as prizes for the kids during their annual Halloween Carnival. So I changed my plan and asked the family to go to the dollar store or the dollar section of Target and grab a few toys to donate to the hospital. They were more than happy to help and provided a lot of toys. I wanted to take this one step further so I got permission from my boss to have a toy collection box at my desk and collect toys from members of the office. I drafted up an email and sent it out to the people at my work and I was pleasantly surprised by how many people wanted to help my cause. When they saw my decorated cardboard box, it got them excited to fill it with lots of goodies for the kids.

So at our family get together we had lasagna, bread and salad for dinner, then went straight into carving our pumpkins then ended the night with announcing the winners of the pumpkin carving contest and looking at all the fun Halloween toys. We all had a great time spending time with one another and coming together for a great cause.

In the years to come, I plan to take Preston to the store so he can pick out the toys to donate to the kids. I think we started this tradition off right and I’m excited to do this again next year!!

Spooky decorations