The first thing I did was create a Halloween Party Ideas board on Pinterest. I definitely did not use all the ideas that I pinned but if I did not have them all in a central location, I'd never remember them. Although we purchased so many party items from our local Dollar Tree, the gas used during the repeated trips up there probably negated the fact that everything was $1. LOL
I downloaded and printed the skull and candy corn invitations from Do It Yourself Invitations. I would have preferred an invitation that was spookier or at least was mostly black and orange, but B liked this one the best, so we went with it. I printed them on card stock, put them in manila envelopes that B decorated with spiders, ghosts, etc. and we hand-delivered them. In addition to day, time and RSVP info, I put this on the cards:
We're having a party! We hope you can come.
Get dressed in your costume. We'll have lots of fun!
I made Joy the Baker's Brownie Bottom Ice Cream Cupcakes with cookies n cream ice cream and topped them with a dollop of buttercream icing instead of whipped cream. I needed something more solid to hold the cupcake topper, The Partiologist's Stained Glass Pumpkins. While I showered, my BFF made the pumpkins.
For the goodie bags, I was proactive and went to Walmart last month to take advantage of the back to school sales. I bought each child a box of colored pencils, a box of crayons and split 2 boxes of 20 pencils each among the 8 guests - all that cost $1 per child. I know all the children had just bought supplies for school, but all those supplies were taken to school; these goodie bag items were for use at home. I had originally planned to use a pack of goodie bags I bought at a yard sale for $0.50, but I could not fit the Honeycrisp Apples in them, so I got cute jack-o-lantern bags from Walmart for $0.97 each. B filled the goodie bags and made tags for them with each guest's name.
Now onto the activities. We checked Halloween CDs out of the library and had music playing when the guests arrived. B held a Monster Mash dance party in the front room until everyone had arrived. Then I had all the kids sit down for the mummy game. I bought a bag each of Halloween erasers, vampire teeth, glow-in-the-dark snakes and bugs at the Dollar Tree and wrapped them up inside 3 or 4 rolls of white crepe paper. I worked on that for 2 hours, while watching TV, the night before the party. Sometimes there was only 1 foot of crepe paper between doodads and sometimes there was 5 feet between them. Each child took a turn unrolling the crepe paper until they got a doodad, ripped off the crepe paper they'd unwound and wrapped it around themselves. Then they passed the ball to the next child. You can see B, above, with paper wrapped around his head and in his mouth are a pair of vampire teeth. He had gotten sweaty in his Angry Birds costume while dancing, so I made him take it off to cool down. Each child collected 4 or 5 doodads and then we put them in their goodie bags for safe keeping (that's why B labeled each bag with a name).
By the time the mummy game was over, Miss Lyn and Francesca, our face painter and balloon artists, had arrived and set up. The kids were not interested in face paintings to begin with but they were enamored with the wonderful balloon creations the ladies made! Snakes, horses, light sabers, a green pig to go with B's Angry Birds costume, an octopus and many more. Anything the kids asked for, they could make. Below you can see B's face painting - very sinister looking and exactly what B asked her to do - and holding his Angry Bird pig while in costume.
Once everyone received a balloon creation, I herded the kids outside to decorate pumpkins while they took turns getting face paintings. I bought 3 packages of 6 jars of paint, some brushes and 2 packages of glitter glue pens at the Dollar Tree and small pumpkins from a local farm. The kids had a great time painting Count Pumpcula, Darth Vader, a Mincecraft Creeper, a fiery graveyard of zombies and more on their gourds.
Some of the kids finished their pumpkin painting early and we had a pumpkin roll game. Two opponents had to roll their pumpkin across the yard using a broom. It proved pretty difficult for all the kids except one - he dominated this game. It didn't matter which pumpkin nor which broom he used, he just flew down the yard!
Once the pumpkin and face paintings were all done, I handed out cupcakes and we all went outside to eat them. Then we all went back inside to wash up. B had requested that his guests bring their scooters and helmets to the party, so after washing up, we all went into the alley out back and scooted some of that sugar off. I had let all the parents know that we would be in the alley at the end of the party so they should come around back to pick up their kids.
Everyone had a great time and I'm so glad we did this!
