A Fun & Delicious Halloween With Hershey's #HersheysHalloween #sponsored

My favorite spooky time of year is finally here and our family could not be more excited! I love Halloween and so do my kids. They love everything about the holiday and all the fun activities that come along with it. Each year we do something a little different in October to celebrate Halloween, but there is one thing that is a must-have every single time: Hershey's chocolate. Okay, we have it in our house pretty much year-round, but Halloween gives us an even better excuse to buy more. Plus, they have all kinds of special Halloween-themed candy that is available for a limited time.

What are you doing this year to celebrate Halloween? 

You don't have to spend a bundle to have a good time and, as a family on a budget, we've come up with a fun list of great ways to have some spooky family fun!

1. Pumpkin Carving - Just this weekend we bought a pumpkin carving kit and two pumpkins for the kids. They were so excited to help out and couldn't wait to get their hands on the pumpkin seeds. The boys helped scoop out the "pumpkin brains" and then continued to plant a pumpkin patch while I carved up the pumpkins. My kids are just a little too young to carve, but we found some other ways for them to participate. We got out finger paints and markers so they could create their own masterpiece.

2. Trick-Or-Treating- As we learned this year, when Halloween falls on a weekday, you may find several different places to trick-or-treat in October. Many churches have fall festivals and trunk-or-treat, which are open to the public. My sis-in-law's neighborhood actually celebrated Halloween this past weekend. On Halloween, Publix is having an in-store trick-or-treat and several neighborhoods around the area are, too.

3. Decorating your home - The kids really enjoyed helping decorate. Most of our decorations came from the $1 store and others were leftovers from last year. We have light-up pumpkins, carved pumpkins, Halloween cut-outs, skeletons, ghosts, spider webs and, most importantly, candy!

4. Creating spooky treats & crafts - We checked out the Hershey's website for some Halloween recipe ideas using the candy we our Hershey's products, Reese's Pumpkin Spiders. Little hands may need some help, but this is great fun. Plus, you don't have to follow the recipe to a tee. For example, the recipe uses Reese's Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cups, but my husband had already eaten all of ours, so we used York Peppermint Patties, another of our favorite candies! The Reese's Peanut Butter cups are bigger and probably easier for smaller hands, though.

Here's the Hershey's version of the recipe with a little tweeking to make it more kid-friendly:

Ingredients

• REESE’S Peanut Butter Pumpkins (1.2 oz. ea.) OR York Peppermint Pumpkin Patties.
• Large pretzel twists 
• 1/4 cup HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate Chips, HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chips or HERSHEY’S Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips*
• YORK PIECES Candies (White or colored)
• Pumpkin Spice Hershey's Kisses

Directions

• Line tray or cookie sheet with waxed paper. Remove wrappers and set out your desired amount of Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins (or York Peppermint Pumpkin Patties). For each spider, pull apart the curved sections of pretzels, which will be the legs for your spiders. cut 8 matching curved sections from pretzels which will form the legs. They really don't have to be so exact. Set aside the pretzels pieces.
• Place milk chocolate chips in small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at MEDIUM (50%) 30 seconds; stir. If necessary, microwave at MEDIUM an additional 10 seconds at a time, stirring after each heating, until chips are melted and smooth when stirred.
• For each spider, place peanut butter pumpkin on prepared tray. Dip the pretzel legs, one at a time, into the chocolate and attach them to the peanut butter pumpkins. Then, add the candy eyes. We used York Pieces Candies and eatable food coloring markers to paint them red! You can use a dot of melted chocolate to dot the eyes if you want.  Allow chocolate to set before moving spiders.
• Cut Pumpkin Spice Hershey's Kisses in half and add one half to each spider. This is not in the original recipe, but we like this tasty addition. 

We've had such a fun-filled October and we still have more to come on Halloween day! I'll be sad when the month is over, but then we have some other holidays coming, so that means more sweets and treats. We hope you had a great October and will have a Happy Halloween filled with Hershey's candies!!!

Disclosure: This post was written for Hershey's in conjunction with Global Influence. Product was received for the writing of this post along with payment. All opinions written are my own.