all things GRAND and BOO-tiful!

Our Grand Lives
18 hours ago
8 min read

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Welcome back to Our Grand Lives!

This is our little space on the internet

where we like to share activities, adventures and celebrations we enjoy

with the special people in our lives…

Littles (grandkids or other beloved children),

Middles (your grown kids),

and other GRANDS (friends, family, and loved ones who make life sweet)!

We believe in getting the most joy

out of every shared moment!

Our motto says it best:

We’ve got a jam-packed post for you today,

filled with lots of lighthearted BOO inspired fun,

just in time to welcome Halloween!

We’ll be revisiting a favorite family tradition

as well as sharing a bit of new inspiration, too…

Festive activities with just the right touch of ghostly charm!

From family celebrations to playful crafts and sweet treats,

our BOO-tiful ideas are perfect for sharing with

your favorite Littles, GRANDS, and everyone in between!

Halloween and all of the festivities that go with it

are only a few short weeks away!

As GRANDS, the best part of the holiday by far

is oohing and aahing over our Littles in their costumes!

Don’t you agree?

Halloween 2024

Yet, as GRANDS and retired kindergarten teachers

who spent MANY Halloweens in the midst of parades and class parties

we know first hand

what a busy and stressful day and evening it can be!

In 2020, Laurie came up with this alternative approach

A Family BOO Bash

to enjoy this holiday with loved ones

without adding stress to an already hectic evening!

Family BOO Bash! 2023… Our youngest - Little P - was only a few days old!

Laurie’s Family BOO Bash typically takes place

the weekend before Halloween

and always includes games for all ages,

festive food, and trick or treating, of course!

We’re reviewing a few FAVES below!

Spooktacular Games!

Laurie and her family love a good game

and they’ve got a few Halloween favorites!

👻 Wizards & Magicians!

An active game that will get everyone moving and giggling!

👻 Spider Toss!

A Halloween take on the classic egg toss game!

👻 Eek! Boo! Snatch!

Our all time family fave!

It’s a pay-attention-quick-thinking game, but... Watch Out!

Your Littles may surprise you and do better than the grown ups!

2025 UPDATE:

In recent years, we’ve used Jenga pieces or plastic spiders in place of the markers we grab

and it’s been a game changer!

If you are looking for more details about each of the above games

you'll find them in this post from 2023!

Last year, a new game became a family favorite…

👻 Zombie Barbies!

Our older Littles and the Middles (our young grown ups) really got into this one!

Ahead of time, I’d found Barbie dolls at our local dollar store

(garage sales and thrift stores are options, too).

All we needed were some scissors and permanent markers

(and glue, too, to turn regular hair into zombie hair)!

Everyone got busy creating their own zombie from their doll

with lots of concentration and giggles taking place!

(Little D did not participate... she did not want to hurt her dolls!)

What a creepy transformation!

Festive Foods!

While games are definitely the star of any Boo Bash,

we always get hungry!

In fact, we’re always looking for easy and tasty FOOD options

that are Little friendly on all counts!

👻 Check out our tasty ideas from 2023!

👻 And from 2024!

(If interested, click on the links above for detailed recipes from each year!)

Trick or Treating!

Our Littles ALWAYS look forward to trick-or-treating on Halloween!

In fact, we think it’s probably their favorite part of the holiday!

So, of course, adding this element to our Family BOO Bash is required!

(click here for details on how we set this up each year!)

Every year…

It’s a family fave!

This past weekend, Laura’s Littles were in town for a visit

so, of course, we had to take advantage of the time together

and have a bit of our own ghostly fun!

👻 Where’s Boo?

Such a simple game to play with Littles - near or far! You can use a small stuffed ghost or make your own like I did, using a permanent marker and a roll of mostly used toilet paper! I taped the edges of the end of the toilet paper to the “back side” so it wouldn’t unravel and then used the marker to make a ghost face on the “front side”! Then we named our ghost “Boo”!

Every day our Littles were at our house, I loosely hid “Boo”somewhere for them to find (think “Elf on the Shelf”). By the last day of their visit, they were wondering where “Boo” might hide next.

👻 Melting Ghosts!

If you’ve got an emerging scientist in your midst, this activity is for them! All you need is a few packing peanuts (be sure they are the newer biodegradable ones made from starch), a black permanent marker and a bowl of water. NOTE: Test your peanuts in water ahead of time to see if they dissolve. If so, they are biodegradable!

To create your ghosts, use the black permanent marker to draw a ghost face on each peanut. Little L loved doing this step! Once done, it’s time to make your ghosts “melt” with a bit of help from science!

Fill a small bowl with room temperature water.

Let your Little put one or more ghosts in the water.

Watch what happens!

Your ghosts will slowly but surely begin to melt away!

Of course, if you want the ghosts to melt more quickly

(or even disappear)

put your fingers in and stir them up like our Little L did!

Older Littles will have fun taking things further by changing the water temperature to test if that impacts how quickly ghosts melt. They could even set a timer to do so!

The Science Behind It All…

These newer packing peanuts are made out of biodegradable corn starch. They break down easily instead of just lying in the garbage dump for years and years like the older version. The addition of water helps break them down even faster.

👻 Ghost Cinnamon Rolls!

We often make breakfast treats when we are enjoying a morning together, and the tube cinnamon rolls are an easy option. I’d seen these cute ghost ones on IG recently where you unravel the dough and reform it into ghosts like this:

I decided to give it a try, but, lesson to self, check the cinnamon rolls before purchasing! When we opened our tube of rolls, they were not the kind that unrolled! OOPS! So, we improvised, and pretended that the dough was playdough and we formed ghost shapes as best we could!

They puffed up a bit when they came out of the oven

(follow the directions on the tube)

so, once again, we improvised and flattened them out a bit while they were warm.

Little L had fun helping me decorate with edible eyes and chocolate chips. Again, I improvised and used what I had on hand. If I were to do it again, I think I’d use mini chocolate chips for the eyes or bigger edible ones!

Our ghosts look a little bit like puppy dogs, don’t you think?

LOL!

No matter! Little L was very proud of her results!

She and her little sister had such fun serving the cinnamon rolls to the grown ups

and, of course, eating them was the best part of all!

Their faces say it all!

👻 Ghost Windsocks!

As a final send-off before our Littles were loaded into the car for the five hour car ride home, I gave them each a ghost windsock that I had quickly made for them!

It was a blustery warm day… perfect weather for a bit more ghostly fun!

Of course, your Littles can make their own,

but we simply ran out of time to do this project together!!

These are super easy to make

with supplies you probably have lying around the house!

I started with a white paper cup and drew a ghost face on it, poked a hole in the top and pulled a rubber band through, knotting it on the inside of the cup. Then, I cut a long piece of wax paper into strips and taped them inside the bottom of the cup! All done!