Halloween has officially been cancelled in Ottawa and its surrounding areas, so now what?

Why not keep the spooky spirit alive with your significant other, or even alone, by experimenting with colours, shapes, textures – and maybe some google eyes.

“Crafts are a great way to brings the Halloween holiday spirit this year,” said Gillian Whitlock, a second-year student in the developmental service worker program. “It’s a nice way to spend quality time with loved ones while having fun together.”

This year, doing something as a family at home is better and safer than going out.

“Doing crafts as a family, with your significant other or roommate is so much better than going out and partying, or trick-or-treating for a kid,” said Hannah Brown, a second-year child, and youth care student. “It just isn’t an option this year, so might as well make it fun.”

As an adult, crafting can be as helpful as it is for kids. It can help reduce stress, anxiety and give an overall feeling of happiness. It’s an easy way for people to express themselves while having fun in the comfort of your own home.

In my case, I’ve always grown up in a very crafty and artistic household. When I was in elementary school, my mom was an education assistant there and other teachers would call her Martha Stewart because of how crafty she was.

Arts and crafts have always been a great way for my mom and me to bond. We teamed up to do the following crafts together and we had a lot of fun.

Here is a list of fun activities we recommend you try.

Wooden Cats:

Start off with wooden planks and cut a triangle into the top of it, this will form the ears. Paint the plank black and when it’s dry draw out the eye shape that is desired and start painting the eyes.

When the eyes are done it should resemble a black cat, when dry add any other fun features that are wanted. Add a rope scarf, pink detailing in the ears, a mouth. The design is yours, have fun with it.

The cats make a great decoration for the house for after Halloween as well, and can easily be left out year-round. You could even dress it up in different things according to the weather outside.

Tick Tack Toe

Grab a little wooden basket, or if you have any left-over wooden planks and paint inside green (or a colour of choice.) Do a few layers of green and when it is finally dry cut out four equal pieces of tape.

Place the tape evenly out on the green board and paint over it with black. Let it dry and slowly peel the tape off the wood.

For the game pieces, I took glass pebbles and hot glued googly eyes to the top of them. Adult supervision is required.

Tick Tack Toe is always a fun game to play with your family.

Paper Pumpkins

Cut equal strips out of construction paper and pin the ends together. When well secured together, start to fan out each strip of paper from the others. It should start to look like a paper ball and resemble a little pumpkin.

Leaves are optional.

The pumpkins create a great decoration even after Halloween and will be easy to store for years to come.

Eyeball Bowling

Grab a stack of solo cups and the closet bag of eyeballs.

Stack the cups on top of one another into a pyramid, those are the pins that are to be knocked down.

Grab a bag of plastic eyeballs or balls and use them to throw at the cups. Whoever knocks the most down wins.

This is a great activity to help enhace a child’s hand eye coordination, or if you’re over the age of 19, you can make it into a beer pong game.

Cupcakes

Cupcakes can either be made from scratch or from the premix box.

These cupcakes are pumpkin spice muffins, made from allspice Betty Crocker cake mix and pumpkin puree.

Put the allspice mix in a big bowl along with the pumpkin puree and three large eggs. Mix well and follow the instructions on the back for what to preheat the oven to and how long they go in for.

Who said you could go wring with pumpkin spice? It’s always a fall favourite.

Pumpkin Rice Krispies

These Rice Krispies are made just like the regular ones, with 40 marshmallows, six cups of Rice Krispy cereal, and a quarter of a cup of butter.

But, before the last step of putting the six cups of Rice Krispies, put orange food colouring in the marshmallow and butter mixture. Or follow the colour chart on the back of the food colouring box to create an orange colour.

Once all the ingredients are together, put in a large baking sheet and let it cool down to room temperature.

When fully cooled down the balls can start being formed from the Rice Krispies. Create palm-sized balls and take a candy/chocolate of choice (preferably brown) and stick it in the top to create the pumpkins stem.

Or instead, when it’s all cooled down, use a cookie cutter and cut the desired shapes out.

These are fun for everyone in the family… to eat

Broom Bags

Take two paper bags and cut strips all down to the bottom on one and cut strips a quarter way down. That way the bag can still properly hold candy inside of it.

Once both bags are cut place the second bag inside the first and start putting candy inside the second bag.

When the desired amount of candy is inside, start bringing the loose strips together like so:

When all pieces are together at the top, place a stick or something to resemble a broom handle at the top.

Tie it at the top with rope and it will all stay together and will look like a broom.

It’s a great gift idea for any kids that won’t be trick or treating to keep the spirit going.