Coming up with new and exciting treats for Halloween every year, year after year, can be a pain! Most of us don't have the time to spend making a lot of fancy treats for a Halloween party or just for our families. Some of us don't have the extra money either, with the economy the way it is now that the country is being run into the ground. So, we need some fast, inexpensive ways to make some tasty treats for the Halloween party this year and here's some ideas that I've come up with.

First, check out some websites that specialize in Halloween recipes like Wanda's Halloween Cookbook and HalloweenRecipes101.com for ideas. You may have some of the things that you need right in your kitchen and that can save you money. Check out some company websites like Libby, Pillsbury and others for printable coupons that will help at the check out, too. Find recipes that the kids can help with, if you have kids or that you might be able to get your hubby to help with. That will save you time by having helpers and it's also a project that can be a family time together.

If you are having a party and need some snack type treats, try making a Chex type party mix in large batches. If you check out some warehouse stores, you can get large boxes of cereal at low prices. Instead of making cookies from scratch, buy Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix and make a few dozen. You can freeze some for later, too.

By doing some digging both on line and off, you can find lots of ways to come up with tasty treats without spending an arm and a leg. And as we all know, we need those to use for props in our yard haunts anyway...

After coming across the website www.halloweengraveyard.com, we've decided to build an even bigger Halloween graveyard in the front yard this year. Haven't decided which type of graveyard fence to make yet, either the wrought-iron or gothic picket fence, will depend on our budget, but we want to start building next month. We want to have at least a dozen plus tombstones inside it.

We've collected quite an assortment of tombstones over the years, from cheap Wal-mart stuff to high end, specially made tombstones. We've always incorporated fog machines into the graveyard somehow. Either as low laying ground fog or just floating through the air. This years addition of a huge gate and fence will realy set it off!

We'll write more as things develope!

Halloween 2009 is over, everything was great, the parties went off without a hitch. And so starts another year of planning for the upcoming Halloween season once again. I don't know about you, but we get all these ideas of stuff that we want to do, things that we want to design and make for our haunt and the like and then forget to write them down. We do our best thinking on long drives so I've stuck a pad of paper and a pen in the glove box just for writing down ideas on the road.

The Halloween & Party trade shows are taking place now and in March. We'll be going and can report back with some of the cool new stuff that's going to be around this year for Halloween and what the costume manufacturers were showing for this year. We have friends that get us in because it's a professional show only. All I can say is that we lust after many things that we see there!