Editor’s note: Carolina students Lizzy, Alyssa and Lauren share how they plan to celebrate heeloween-at-home. Lizzy and Alyssa are also Carolina Social Influencers.
While this year may not be exactly how Tar Heels imagined it to be, Carolina students are finding creative ways to celebrate even the small things. On the 31st, students aren’t allowed to gather on Franklin Street in costumes, but these Tar Heels have made sure to fill October with plenty of other Heeloween-at-home activities.
Halloween Movie Championship
“As soon as September ended, my housemates and I added two pumpkins to our front porch, hung up a “Happy Halloween” banner in the kitchen and swapped the blue kitchen dish towel for an orange one.
One of my housemates comes from a family of Halloween fans. Every year, they’re counting down the days until trick-or-treaters come by. This year, given that it’s safest to celebrate Halloween from our couch, my friend and her sister created a Halloween movie bracket, breaking down the best Halloween movies into carefully planned tiers. Each week of October, they’ve picked two to three movies for our house to watch and score based on a few criteria. Then one movie advances as the “best” of that tier. By the end of the month, we’ll have successfully narrowed down the best movies.
While it may sound a bit overboard, my housemate, her family and our whole house have enjoyed having this bracket to bond over. As Sunday rolls around, I get to ask “What movies are on the slate for this week?” Honestly, I’ve loved “Halloweentown” and “Hocus Pocus” so much, maybe this will be a tradition we keep around.” -Alyssa ’22
Celebrating Fall Traditions
“I’ve never been a big fan of Halloween but I love fall! I love pumpkin carving, apple cider and long hikes outside! Which is why my housemates and I wanted to have a day full of fall festivities.
One Saturday, after we took our weekly trip to the Carrboro farmers market, we all hung out outside to carve and paint pumpkins. It was a really nice break from doing our homework, and was nice to spend time outside without a single screen in sight. We made our pumpkins really personalized; each housemate had something really unique to them that they wanted to portray. I’m a big “Harry Potter” fan so I painted a little symbol from all the books on mine.
On Halloween, all six of my housemates are dressing up as characters from “Monsters Inc.” and we’re going to have a little watch party. We’ve already made a Spotify playlist for it, and are currently working on our Pinterest board for decoration ideas. Even though it may sound silly, we’ve found that sometimes you have to take a silly idea and run with it!” – Lizzy ’22
Mummy Hot Dogs and Spider dip and Ghost pizza, oh my
“In a normal semester, my housemates and I usually dress up together and head to Franklin Street to meet up with friends and see everyone else’s costumes.
This year, since we can’t do that, my housemates and I are having a Halloween-themed cooking competition and dinner.
Each of us is picking a different Halloween appetizer from Pinterest and then we’re going to see who is able to replicate the recipe the best. As of right now, we’re having mummy hot dogs, a spider seven-layer dip, and ghost mini pizzas. After dinner, we plan to watch “Halloweentown” or “Twitches” while eating some “Frankenstein” Rice Krispie treats. It’s definitely not a normal year, but we are grateful that we can celebrate together!” – Lauren ’21
Remember to stay safe this Halloween, Heels! We hope you can find some inspiration for your own Heeloween-at-home plans. Enjoy spending time with those in your quaran-team: watch a movie, cook a fun meal or carve pumpkins!