I confess, I love some things about Halloween, especially since I’ve figured out how to keep it healthy for our family.

As we were preparing for our fun evening, I thought I’d share with you how I’ve done this.

The few days after Halloween I stop at local stores to pick up lots of discounted fun stuff.

I hand this stuff out the next year, things such as rings, stickers, fake teeth, erasers, etc. (Why not when it’s 75% off???)

I keep a few semi-healthy treat items to “trade” with my kids for their candy like, YummyEarth’s evaporated cane juice lollipops or hard candies. As long as I tell them ahead of time that we’re only going to have a little and get some trades from mom, they are pretty okay with it.

My husband and I prefer a bit of dark chocolate for ourselves.

We make yummy pumpkin cookies each year, which I hand out to the parents at our neighborhood trunk or treat. It’s becoming a tradition. I use whole white wheat flour and Evaporated Cane Juice sugar in my cookies, along with a few dark chocolate chips…mmmm!

We have a big bin full of costumes from yard sales, that the kids love to pull stuff from. I encourage my kids not to dabble too much in the scary and dark side of this holiday. We generally like to keep things on the lighter side (and have less nightmares as a result). Although, I admit we like to watch Disney’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as a tradition.

Here are the fun Jibjab videos I’ve made of the kids over the years. They love to watch it over and over, and I don’t know why, but so do I!

My Halloween Jib-Jab Videos

This year we learned that our dentist is paying $1 per pound of candy to the child and $1 to the child’s school when they bring it into the office. So that’s what we’re going to do. And if we don’t have time to go to the dentist, I just do this myself.

Here’s a video we did on having a healthy Halloween.

I don’t feel guilty at all for helping my family enjoy this holiday without the traditional amount of white sugar treats. We don’t have big emotional swings the next day, we feel good and stay healthy. And after so many kids I’ve really been able to tell a difference. It’s nice and I’m completely satisfied doing it this way.

How do you help your kids stay healthy around Halloween time?