While it’s easy to get distracted by all that candy, Halloween is actually a great time to get in the kitchen with your kids. Carving pumpkins to make spooky or silly creations is a terrific way to get kids in touch with their veggies, so we’ve rounded up lots of ideas for you to trick out your pumpkins, while treating your family to a filling pumpkin-based recipe or two! Get ready to get spooky!

If you have tiny ones at home who are eager to decorate pumpkins, you can skip the carving - instead, try letting them fingerpaint their pumpkins or deck them out in glitter! We also love this candy decoration idea - just put out gummy candy, marshmallows and toothpicks, and let little ones create some sweet faces on their pumpkins.  Don’t forget, even if they’re too young to carve, your kiddos will still have a great time cleaning out pumpkin guts - just pre-loosen the sides so little hands can properly scoop out all the seeds.  For older kids, beautiful carving templates are available for free - but we like these fun googly eyed zombie pumpkins best, especially since it’s easy to make your own googly eyes with ping pong balls and a marker. For an extra-chilling touch, put the parent’s unit of an old baby monitor into one of your finished creations and let your kids do the talking (or cackling or howling) into the other unit.

Once your pumpkin creations are carved and ready to go, fuel up with some of these gourd-geous treats (sorry, Hallowe’en brings out some pretty scary puns!)

If your pumpkin carvers need a snack, stat, try these easy toddler pumpkin recipes. Then, kids can sort through the pumpkin guts to roast the pumpkin seeds—toss them in oil and salt them before roasting. Or check out these ideas to turn them into spicy or sweet snacks. For bigger appetites, this recipe for pumpkin chili in a bread bowl is the perfect way to warm up (and fill up!) before trick-or-treating begins. And no matter how you feel about pumpkin-flavoured things, this recipe for Roasted Pumpkin Filled With Everything Good is a winner.  Looking for something a little sweeter? We’ve got that too: feast your eyes on these pumpkin-cinnamon streusel buns!

Got an idea or recipe we missed? Tell us about it on our Facebook Page  or Twitter - or share your family’s spookiest creations below. Happy haunting!