**This post is brought you by the letter, “H”, and by my wife! :) She was gracious enough fill in for me today in writing this post while I work on a super secret side project. As always she has great ideas for how to save our kid's teeth and spread out the usage of our Halloween candy.**
I’m not a huge fan of Halloween, but I do love candy and so do my three boys. We always go trick or treating and hand out candy to all of our neighbor kids. This year we had Superman, Harry Potter and Spiderman out on the sidewalks looking to fill up their loot bags. With three kids getting tons of candy and a little leftover from handing it out, I set out a few years ago to figure out what to do with all this candy. God knows that I do not need my kids to eat tons of candy all at once. We allow our kids to pick out a few pieces to eat that night and the same happens for the next few days, but then mom gets to combine it all together and do a few things with it.
The main thing that we have done the past few years is separating the candy and taking 5-6 pieces and putting them into plastic baggies to use for family movie nights, as well as any road trips to see the grandparents. I simply dump out all the candy and since we have 3 kids and everything has to be fair, I start sorting and find out what I have 3 of or multiples of 3 of and put a few chocolate items, a few fruity pieces and a sucker in each bag. I color code with sharpie markers which ones have the same items, so that each kiddo gets the same candy for each movie or road trip. This year, I ended up with 30 baggies, good for 10 movies/road trips over the next few months!
This year, I also used my favorite candy bar (Butterfinger), chopped it up and used it as a topping on some ice cream. If you happen to 
have a family gathering or birthday coming up soon after Halloween, I would recommend saving quite a few of those fun size candy bars and making your own sundae bar. The bonus to this idea is that your immediate family are not the only ones consuming all the sugar. Sharing is always encouraged!
An idea that I may try next year(if I remember) is saving a little of that candy to use for a family advent calendar for the month of December. I found this idea as I was browsing Pinterest the other day and thought it was a great idea as well. The miniature candy that you receive on Halloween is perfect to use for some type of advent tree/calendar.
I hope these ideas of what I have done, did do this year and will hopefully remember to do next year will help you ration out all the candy over the next few months. Another idea worth mentioning is having your kids sell their candy to a local dentist(usually $1/lb) who then sends it to troops who are stationed overseas. So, leave a comment and let me know what you do with your children’s Halloween candy – I’m always looking for new ideas!
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For the past three years, after throwing away a ton of Halloween candy in the summer, my kids agreed to bring their Halloween candy to our orthodontist the day after Halloween. The ortho pays the kids $1/lb of candy and then donates all of the candy to troops overseas. The first year didn’t go so well as the kids didn’t keep any candy and were mad about that, however the last two years they will sort their candy (with help from me) Halloween night and keep only what they think they will eat. This year they donated 13 lbs of candy and kept a pound or two for themselves.
You guys have leftover candy? We just eat it all. :-) And, BTW, I think you’re super brave for feeding them candy on a road trip. My mom just took me and the kids to DQ the other day. We ate cones in the car and within about 2 minutes they were giddy and silly on their “sugar high”. :-) Love the idea about Butterfingers crushed over ice cream – yum!
The chocolate candies and candy bars can be chopped up and used as ingredients in all kinds of cookie and cake recipes. Not sure that helps much with reducing the sugar intake, though!
My wife was talking about a program that sends extra candy to our troops overseas which I thought was a great idea.
Wonderful post Jen! You did a great job with the costumes too.
Yay Jen! Great ideas and really helpful!
My parents always sorted our candy (to put like things together, check for tampering and get rid of the gum we weren’t allowed to have) and then rationed it out. We always got one baked good in our lunch boxes and one baked good as a bedtime snack. After Halloween my parents simply swapped a baked good for a Halloween candy, this way our sugar intake didn’t increase. There were a couple of years where this lasted until Christmas.
Butterfingers are also good chopped up and baked into your favorite chocolate chip cookie!