Clay turned 7 this week. I nominate myself for the Mother of the Year award, because after he painstakingly created his invitation by hand, I ruined it by writing on it that he was turning 6! Can you spell denial? In any case his party is this weekend and we’ll have a gaggle of children here to celebrate with us.

The Party:

Having a birthday so close to Halloween lends itself naturally to a themed party. But the ideas I’ll share here are perfect for a Halloween party, as well. In fact, one of the ideas I’ve been wanting to try is a roving party. At a roving party there are a bunch of different host houses and the party migrates from one house to the next, with a stop for a treat and/or activity at each hose. This reduces the hostess stress and spreads the fun throughout the whole apartment building or neighborhood.

On to the party planning: If we have time this year we’ll make another piñata to be destroyed with a few swipes of a whiffle ball bat. This year he’s talking about a skull- so a basic balloon shape should work well when combined with some white tissue paper and a black sharpie. But stay tuned for an even better piñata idea at the end of the post! Clay’s cake will be chocolate with chocolate frosting and crushed up Oreos and spooky graveyard-type decorations (including but not limited to gummy worms and beheaded sourpatch kids).

The Activities:

Here are a few of the ideas for party fun that my son and I have come up with:

1. A scavenger hunt
2. Face painting
3. Pin the mouth on the ghost
4. Pumpkin decorating (quicker and cleaner than carving which is perfect for the smaller set.)
5. Pumpkin seed toss
6. Piñata
7. Cookie decorating
8. Scarecrow making
9. Bag decorating (get ready to collect Halloween loot!)
10. Trick or treating
11. Three legged race
12. Make fairy houses
13. Mummy wrapping (provide long strips of an old sheet and everyone tries to wrap one team member).
14. Bone hunt (think egg hunt)

The Killer Idea for Goodie Bags:

Make tiny water balloon sized piñatas and fill each with tiny toys and candy for the kids to bring home. One of the activities can even be to decorate each mini-piñata as a jack-o-lantern OR a skull depending on the shape of your balloon! HOW FUN! HOW CHEAP! HOW DIFFERENT! (How time consuming! But fun enough to be worth it, I think!)

I got the idea from Not Martha, which is far more Martha-y than I, but is totally worth some time to dig into the archives.

Please share any fun Halloween-related ideas or links and we’ll gather them together for a post of their own! Leave a comment or send an email to: meginhatch (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

by Megin Hatch

Photo provided by the author via a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.