Have you ever participated in a Trunk or Treat event for Halloween? I participated in my first one this year. It was so much fun!
Of course, the big decision was, how am I going to decorate my trunk? How do you decorate a trunk? How do you fill a whole trunk with stuff and not go broke?
By now you probably know that I love science. I really wanted to make a science lab. I don’t have any official scientific equipment, though. I have a lab coat, safety glasses, and gloves to use for a costume, but nothing to fill a trunk.
I went shopping at Dollar Tree, hoping to find something there. I found some caution tape, creepy bugs, glow in the dark rats (lab rats!), plastic eyeballs, and nasty teeth. I even found some green candy fingers. A plan was beginning to form…
I’d set up some jars of disgusting stuff to look like a mad scientist’s storage room. I could use a few old peanut butter jars to hold my “specimens”.
Every lab has liquids for experiments. I filled a few plastic orange juice containers with water, colored them with food coloring, and put “poison” and “acid” signs on them.
I added mineral oil and colored water to small bottles for bubbly concoctions.
Then I made a batch of slime and added a few plastic baby spiders to it to make it look extra creepy.
Free scientific icons can be found on openclipart.org, like the Radioactive and Biohazard symbols, a skull and crossbones for Poison, and images of a beaker and flask.
I made a sign for my laboratory: “Science Lab. Danger. Do Not Enter” using a neon green poster board and pasted the beakers and flasks on it.
Although this sounds like a lot, it was definitely not going to fill up my trunk. It was just a couple of peanut butter jars and orange juice containers with a bowl of candy in the middle. I really had to think about how to make my idea work. I had to make my trunk smaller. It took a while, but I finally had an idea! I had a bunch of cardboard boxes sitting around. I used them to block off the deepest part of the trunk, and to fill up the sides, leaving a much smaller area in the center. I threw a black plastic table cloth on top of the boxes to clean it up. Then I stacked everything on top. It worked!
Now, I wouldn’t be Zinnia’s Closet without my goody bags. I made MINI bags for everyone. They were big enough to hold 3 Fun Size pieces of candy, just enough for a trick-or-treater.
Trunk or Treat was a success! Almost 100 kids came to the event, it was amazing!
In case you are wondering, here’s how much it cost:
- Eyeballs: $1
- Teeth: $1
- Bugs: $1
- Rats: $1
- Fingers: $1
- Caution Tape: $1
- Poster Board: $0.72
- Mineral Oil: $1.98
- Baby Spiders: $0.98
- Glue for Slime: $1
- Black Table Cloth: $0.94
Not even $12 in total! (I had borax for slime and food coloring already, that will add another $8.)
Happy Halloween!