As you can see from the photo of my daughter in full Nightmare Before Christmas regalia, we're ready for Halloween in our house! We're ready for it on the Mommy Poppins sites, too. This week, we rounded up free family-friendly Halloween parades in NYC, do-it-yourself Halloween decorations and accessories, haunted houses in New Jersey and Halloween train rides in Connecticut. Be sure to check out our Halloween Guides for NYC, New Jersey and Connecticut for a truly terrifying amount of seasonal activities.

Of course Halloween isn't the only scary thing on our mind: We're also all obsessed with the upcoming election. Our Boston site shared a wonderful post about teaching your kids about voting. Regardless of which candidate you support, it's important to involve your kids in the process so that when they grow up, they become voters, too.

In other big news this week, Mommy Poppins is getting our own ice cream flavor! And we want you to help us choose what it will be. Our friends at Malu, which is one of our top places to have dessert in Long Island City, are considering five different flavors and you can vote for your favorite on our Facebook page. Make it sweet!

Here's what else we covered on our NYC site this week:

This week we were all about Halloween. Not only have we updated most of the posts in our NYC Halloween Fun Guide, our New Jersey and Connecticut sites launched their own guides filled with the kind of holiday fun you can only find outside the city, like haunted train rides and massive corn mazes.

If the Bronx Zoo's Boo at the Zoo is on your must-do list this month, you'll want to enter our Boo at the Zoo giveaway—we'll be posting the winners on our Facebook page on Saturday, so make sure you enter by Friday! It's also the time to sign up for FREE fall swimming lessons for kids. The Parks Department is holding an online lottery for spots through Tuesday, October 16.

Finally, since we often look to our readers for inspiration, information and new ideas, we'd like to hear your thoughts about some exceptional events Mommy Poppins is planning on hosting in NYC. Please take our very short survey so we can find out what kinds of activities you're interested in and what neighborhoods are most convenient for your family.

Here's what we covered on the NYC this week:

While the summer months are full of free outdoor shows, once fall arrives theater moves inside and ticket prices go from zero to unaffordable. That's why we were so excited to find out about Urban Stages' Outreach Octoberfest, a festival of FREE family performances that takes place throughout the month.

Urban Stages has a 20-year history of touring productions to local schools and libraries, and you can catch a bunch of those offerings over the next few weeks, including Blown Away by Poetry, which my daughter and I saw earlier this year at the New York International Fringe Festival and just loved. The lineup is quite diverse. In fact the only thing these shows seem to have in common is that they're all kid-friendly and educational. If that makes you roll your eyes, don't worry: From what I've seen, Urban Stages' shows are quite engaging and are as entertaining as they are enriching. Plus during this fest, you'll find interactive offerings for younger kids on the weekends, and more mature history-based productions for middle-schoolers on weeknights.

If you were following our Facebook page last weekend, then you know the Mommy Poppins gang had a pretty jam-packed schedule. We posted pictures from our adventures at the Dumbo Arts Festival, Maker Faire and the Morningside Lights illuminated cityscape parade (see the attached photo). And we're not slowing down this Columbus Day weekend: OpenHouseNewYork, the Historic House Festival and the Blessing of the Animals are all on our must-do list.

Halloween festivities are picking up, too. The New York Botanical Garden opens its annual Haunted Pumpkin Garden this weekend—we're giving away tickets to the jack-o'-lantern display in our newsletter this week so make sure you're subscribed. And of course pumpkin picking is in full swing at pumpkin patches near NYC and even a few right here in the city.

The three-day weekend is the perfect time to take a day trip and our Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut sites all highlight the best things going on in their respective regions. Columbus Day weekend is also a great time to plan your next big out-of-town vacation (or just fantasize about one). Over on our Travel site we just finished a series of posts about Clearwater Beach, Florida, including our visits to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and the nearby Dali Museum, a review of the Hilton Clearwater Beach and our list of the best things to do with kids in the resort town .

Here's what else we covered on the NYC site this week:

We're just saying goodbye to September and already the Halloween season seems to be upon us. (As any kid can tell you, you can never start celebrating too early.) We've already begun updating our NYC Halloween Fun Guide since lots of big seasonal favorites are about to start, like the Bronx Zoo's Boo at the Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden's Haunted Pumpkin Garden and Historic Hudson Valley's Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze.

Speaking of jack-o'-lanterns, pumpkin picking season has arrived. Find out where to grab great gourds less than an hour from midtown Manhattan or check our Farm Guide for other pumpkin places on Long Island, in New Jersey and Western Connecticut. Pumpkin picking is a wonderful activity for next week's Columbus Day holiday weekend.

If you're still trying to plan your activities for this weekend, you have a bunch of truly exceptional events to choose from, including World Maker Faire, the Dumbo Arts Festival and the Morningside Lights Illuminated City Parade. That's my daughter and her friends in the photo, beaming proudly about the wire skeleton they made for a clock tower lantern in one of the free preparatory art workshops. We can't wait to see it lit up on Saturday night! Here's what else we covered this week on our NYC site:

Sadly, the Dumbo Arts Fest was discontinued in 2014 after 18 years. Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood is full of funky, family-friendly art experiences all year-round. But every September, the area's creative spirit explodes onto the streets as part of the three-day Dumbo Arts Festival. Although this free fest isn't specifically aimed at families, most of it is kid-friendly, and over the past few years the organizers have added a bunch of hands-on activities for children to the lineup, making it even more enticing.

This year, the fest takes place Friday, September 28 to Sunday, September 30 (yes, the same weekend as the equally awesome World Maker Faire. Terrible timing!) and there are a lot of new attractions for families. We're particularly excited to check out the brand-new Art Village, a section of interactive projects being curated by the Children's Museum of the Arts. We've got the scoop on this new attraction and all of the other cool things to do with kids at this year's Dumbo Arts Festival.

Fall has officially arrived, which means cooler weather, colorful foliage and our seasonal class deals post. We've got awesome discounts on some really popular programs, like 25% off classes at the Central Park, Prospect Park and Queens Zoos, and up to 61% off at Chess NYC. Speaking of classes, we also updated our list of free kids' enrichment programs with info about a new no-cost art class at Upstairs on the Lower East Side. Every time we hear about a new free class, we add it to the post, so it's a good one to bookmark.

Fall also brings Columbus Day, and our Travel site has a wonderful roundup of family travel deals for the holiday weekend and beyond, plus lots of great suggestions for where to go. You don't necessarily need to travel far: Our New Jersey site has a list of 25 fun and mostly free things to do in Hoboken, and we just shared our favorite apple picking places in Eastern Connecticut and Hartford County. You can find posts about apple orchards throughout the tri-state area in our Pick-Your-Own Guide.

We also added a new culture post to our Fall Fun Guide: The best new museum exhibits for kids opening this autumn, including interactive installations at three of NYC's children's museums. Here's what else we covered this week on our NYC site:

We've been working hard on our Classes Guide, updating old posts and adding new ones. Reading about awesome and enriching kids' classes is always fun... until you get to the prices. That's why we reached out to some of our favorite programs and asked them to extend deals to our readers. The result is seven excellent offers for kids that you won't want to miss, from babies through tweens. Save big on classes like chess, music, animals, animation and more. Act fast! These deals are too hot to hang around long.