Crier Landing Page >>

SMMC MOMS SHARE HALLOWEEN TIPS AND THOUGHTS

By: Pamela Parker   |  October 21, 2021

Halloween is a special time where young imaginations can run wild and kids are given the creative license to dress up as anything that has inspired them that year. 

There isn’t another day where children are encouraged to gather as much candy as they humanly could carry in their little buckets. 

For moms, it is also a festive period that takes planning and a little thought in the lead up to the day, something that pays off as the whole family joins in to make memories that will last a lifetime. So this year, our SMMC moms share their tips with The Crier on preparation, the best streets to trick-or-treat on and their plans on how they are spending this fun-filled season.

Scroll down to check out the fun outfits and tips from your fellow moms! 

PAMELA ZIZZO, TAM JUNCTION



Bird Lands in Tam Junction is a good place for trick or treating. We are having family over for warm bowls of chili and will then walk over to Bird Lands to look at the costumes and decorations.   

MICHELLE SQUIRE, SAN RAFAEL



The best neighborhood around us for trick-or-treating is the Sun Valley in San Rafael!   The neighbors love to decorate their houses and often have garage bands playing and offer wine to the parents walking their kids around for Trick or Treating.  It is a blast!  We love our little neighborhood!

Halloween Hack
We love to make simple butter halloween cookies with Halloween cookie cutters and then we decorate them with themed sprinkles and frosting.  Here's our secret recipe:

Butter Cookie Recipe
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 tablespoon orange or apple juice
2-1/2 cups flour

Mix the first 6 ingredients with an electric mixer until fluffy.  Gradually stir in flour by hand until well mixed.  Chill dough 2-3 hours in the refrigerator until firm enough to roll out with a rolling pin.  Preheat the oven to 400.  Roll out half of the dough at a time on a floured board until 1/8" to 1/4" thick.  Cut with your favorite Halloween cookie cutters and place cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 6-10 minutes at 400 until the edges of the cookies are light brown. Remove from the cookie sheet and cool on a wire rack. Decorate with your favorite spooky decorations and ENJOY!  

ALI BASSMAN, TIBURON



Our favorite neighborhood to trick or treat in Tiburon is Belvedere East, right at the intersection of Trestle Glen and Tiburon Boulevard. We used to live there and love how flat and family-oriented the neighborhood is and it is easy to get from house to house!

KATE ANGUS, MILL VALLEY

The best neighborhood around us for trick or treating is Sycamore Park. Don’t be afraid to plan your costume around what’s already in your dresser or what you can easily order from Amazon! No shame in keeping it simple. 

I’m excited that my daughter is older and loves going on walks, so we’ll try trick or treating this year or we will go for a nice walk at least. I hope she doesn’t notice that I’m going to eat most (or all) of her candy. 

TRICIA CONWELL, CORTE MADERA



Halloween has always been a time of year that I grew up loving. My mom hosted halloween parties when I was a kid, then in college, halloween became about the “party life”. Halloween to me has always signified the transition from summer to the holidays. 

I enjoy dressing up and err on the side of comedy. I hope to pass along my love of the pumpkin-spiced time of year to my son, Donovan. I hope he has a love of falling leaves, the change for cold weather and, with his friends, competes for the most amount of candy trick-or-treating with his friends.

DAHLIA STEIN, SAN RAFAEL 



The Sun Valley neighborhood is the best one for trick or treating. I had no idea how cool it was for Halloween until I moved there! 

This Halloween will be spent making sustainable Halloween decorations out of recycled objects. We will also be doing some Halloween puzzles, games, setting up a contactless Halloween front yard for trick-or-treaters with themed music. 

It will also include visiting the Mill Valley Trunk-or-Treat activity that SMMC is hosting at the event! 

My favorite memory two years ago was watching my 4 year old son pass out candy and he had more fun doing that than actually going to get candy from other people’s homes. Plus I had a trick-or-trick dad walk up to our house whom I hadn’t seen since we went to preschool together over 30 years ago!

The age of the child = how many pieces of candy they get to eat. 

SHANNON KAISER, TIBURON



Halloween is one of my family's favorite holidays. We love dressing up and hitting all of the community trick-or-treating events such as Trunk-or-Treat at the Mill Valley Community Center, the Tiburon Halloween Fair and the BADM Goblin Jamboree. It's so wonderful to see many of our favorite events returning after previous Octobers spent indoors escaping smoke from the fires in 2018 and 2019 and then Covid in 2020. 

My kids begin planning their costumes months in advance and then without fail they change their mind midway through October. In November I try to pick up costumes on sale so that they have spares when they inevitably change their minds and would prefer to be a unicorn over a princess or an Among Us character rather than Minecraft. 

Then for the grand Halloween finale: Trick-or-Treating! We stick close to home and enjoy seeing all of our neighbors and decorations in our flat neighborhood of Paradise Cay. So much candy is collected. I let them eat some for a couple of days and then the Switch Witch appears and brings a much coveted toy while whisking away the leftover candy. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween! 

Pamela Parker lives in Mill Valley with her husband, son and cat. She began her journalism career writing for financial and legal magazines in Sydney, Australia. After spending almost a decade Down Under, she moved to Singapore where she worked as a TV news producer for BBC World News and local broadcaster Channel News Asia. She co-currently serves as Editor-in-chief of The Crier and on the board as the 2021 President-Elect.

More from this issue:

Fall is Still Fall Read >>

Halloween Book Recommendations Read >>

Holidays Without the Hustle Read >>

How to Nurture Yourself Too Read >>

This month’s SMMCpreneur: Sierra Devoto of PoppyMaven Read >>

Don't Panic About Ants Read >>