10 Best Tips to Keep Your Child (And You Too) Safe

The best rule of thumb when it comes to safety, is "plan ahead, and be prepared, then plan some more". No one wants their Halloween turning into something really scary.
Halloween remains one of my most favorite nights. Coming from a large family, we had the safety part of our Halloween Evenings down. Here's a lifetime (all 32 years of it) of Halloween Safety Tips for you and your family to use. I'm using them this Halloween as I go as a plus size ######y Venus in my Halloween Costume. My daughter was thinking of going as a regal Hera!
The Costumes themselves seem to cause the most problems:
- Take a good look at the costume. Is it safe? Is it fire proof? Are the eye holes large enough to see through, and, allow peripheral vision?
- Are there long flowing robes tailling behind your little one that may get caught in the shoes...or entangled in the trick-or-treater behind him?
- Is the costume bright and reflective? Consider adding a bit of reflective tape or striping to costumes and trick-or-treat bags for greater visibility.
- If your child is carrying some type of prop, such as a scythe, butcher knife or a pitchfork, ensure that the tips are smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen on.
- Place emergency identification (name,ED Hardy Handbags, address, phone number) discreetly within the costume or on a bracelet. This is a great time to teach your young ones your home phone number and how to dial 9-1-1 if they have an emergency or become lost. Remind them that 9-1-1 can be dialed free from any phone.
- Unless there's one built in, have your young one carry a flashlight. Make sure each child has a flashlight with fresh batteries. Bring along some chemical lightsticks just in case. Also, this would be a great time to buy fresh batteries for your home smoke alarms.
Safety around the house is also important:
- If you've put out jack-o-lanterns on your porch with candles in them, then get on your knees and see the perspective a youngster might have on Halloween. Ensure that those jack-o-lantern's are far enough out of the way to prevent kids costumes from accidentally being set on fire. This would be a great time to review with your children the principle of "Stop-Drop-Roll", should their clothes catch on fire.
- Since you're already on your knees, make that extra effort to eliminate tripping hazards on your porch and walkway. Check around your property for flower pots, low tree limbs, support wires or garden hoses that may prove hazardous to young children rushing from house to house.
- Kids always want to help with the pumpkin carving. Don't allow small children to use a sharp knife to cut the top or the face. There are many kits available that come with tiny saws that work better than knives and are even safer too, although you can be cut by them. It's best to let the kids clean out the pumpkin and draw a face on it, which you can carve for them.
- Look over the candy your children received tonight. Have them dump it out all in different parts of a large room so they won't complain about their sister or brother's candy getting mixed in with theirs.... Now, look at it closely, all of it. No fruits (razor blades), No torn packages, no "loose-fit" wrappers, nothing that's suspicious. You must do this as the little ones are simply too concerned about eating it than inspecting it for themselves!
Now, although this is a great bit of advice, it technically has nothing to do with safety...but it could prevent your kids from getting sick on over ingesting all that collected booty: Jedi Mind Trick #1. Make Halloween really fun. Take the kids out to eat before the trick-or-treating kicks off. Let them get filled up at dinner, and they probably won't be tempted to burn through their booty of candy at the end of the night.
Happy Halloween!
We may think our wants equal our needs. In other words, that we just have to have a certain pair of shoes or gadget to be happy, successful, etc. While this can seem simple when we're talking about basic needs like shelter and food, it can get murky when we're looking at other items. Here's an easy way to really get conscious about determining the difference between a need and want.Weighing In is a technique for cutting through the financial fog that envelops so many overshoppers. Weighing In involves the disciplined recording of purchases-and something more. You also categorize each purchase, choosing from a master list that groups expenses into logical bins: Home, Food, Clothing, Entertainment, Education, and so on. And you assign each purchase a Necessity Score, based on your dispassionate evaluation of how much you need it. (Need, not want.)
This data is entered into the Daily Weigh-In Form, which I introduced last posting. Here's the form again:Let's focus on the concept of necessity.In the fourth column, you assign each purchase a Necessity Score: 0 if the purchase is totally unnecessary, 1/3 if it's not very necessary, 2/3 if it's pretty necessary, and 1 if it's entirely necessary.There is, of course, a certain subjectivity to assigning necessity scores; the decision will depend to some extent on your psychological awareness, even on your existing debt level and your present and future expenses. But here's a rough guide. If you fell and broke your leg during the week, the check to the orthopedist would be entirely necessary; you'd give that a Necessity Score of 1.