So... ghosts. You must understand that in the Netherlands Halloween is a controversial holiday that is celebrated only by a few (mostly expats) and things like 'ghosts', 'witches' and other things are sometimes really frowned upon by other christians. So that put me in a bit of a sticky with regards to other moms and families... how to keep my word to my son but keep it fun and light hearted at the same time.
Here's what we came up with.
We did lots of decorations.
(Doing those together is really the reason I do themed birthday parties - I just love getting crafty with my kids and since they aren't very motivated towards crafty things except when they're working towards a big fun party.... you get the picture :) ).
PS Click on the photo's for a larger view...
Quite a few of these decorations can be found on my pinterest boards (Kids Crafts and Kids Crafts from Krokotak).
The house I just cut with a hobby knife free handed (crooked lines add to the weird haunted house look); The little ghost garland I cut from folded crepe paper so I could cut 10 in one go. We then stuck black crepe circles on for eyes.
The window pictures show (it's hard to see) spider webs that I drew on the windows with black paint in a clean glue tube (that worked amazingly well!). And you probably can't see the really scarey spider made from black paper (circle body, 8 strips for legs, bent in 2 places each) and red pom pom eyes with small black pupils glued on that'sitting in the window web.
We planned games.
Check out the costumes and masks! I kept it really really simple: half a bed sheet, hole cut out for the head, elastic sewn around that hole. Voila. Hang around nek. I skipped on all the hemming since (except 2 for my boys) these costumes were for one time only. (I plan to re-use the sheets for some craft ideas I have...)
The mask can be found on my pinterest board Kids Crafts.
Marshmellow ghost
We gave the kids a bowl of marshmellows, m&m's, toothpicks and chocolate icing (to use as glue) and 3 minutes to make their own little edible ghost. The most creative results earned a kid 2 points. The rest earned 1 point for trying. We did this for all the games.
Water bottle bowling
We set up 6 water bottles and used a soft baby ball (since we were indoors). The only rule was that they needed to stay behind the doormat (for distance).
Ghost hunt
I made these really cute little ghosts from a scrunched up piece of paper (for the head), wrapping a tissue wipe around the 'head' and securing with some thread. Then I drew 2 eyes and a mouth on the head with a marker. They were adorable (see decoration picture).
We hid them around the house, peeking out from behind paintings, books, toy boxes etc. And set a limit (10mins) for the search (to avoid boredom... these kids really needed to be kept busy to ensure that the peace was kept).
Ghosting daddy
We had to skip this idea because of the time, but it would have been such fun! We were planning to hand each kid a toilet roll. Daddy was willing to suffer their efforts to make him the loveliest of ghosts with toilet paper and scotch tape. Too bad we missed out on that one!
Scavenger hunt/ Quest
My wonderful husband set out this 'quest' for the kids to follow outside. We were counting on an overkill of energy to run off so he made it pretty long. He pinned little ghosts on trees for them to find and follow. They were really competitive in being the first to find and collect the ghost markers. We even had some pushing and fighting to resolve. I was absolutely amazed (and b.t.w. 'who has the most ghosts' was NOT even an objective - they made that 'game' up themselves).
The trail led through 2 small playgrounds were we had some activities for them to do (we also allowed some 'free playing' until tempers started to flare).
Bean Bag Balance Race
Put a bean bag on your head and race someone to the other side.
Hopping Ghost Race
Basically hopping to the other side on one leg.
Backtrack Race
Basically doing a small track (around play things and posts) backwards as fast as you can.
Ghost Tag
One kid is 'it'. He tries to tag someone else. When he does, he and the other kid must hold hands and together they must try to tag someone else. The more kids that are tagged, the longer the 'ghost chain' is until only one kid is left - the winner.
We made - this truly was the highlight of the day - a totally fabulous creepy tunnel out of 15 cardboard boxes varying from huge to just big enough for a 7 year old to crawl through.
They had to climb into a standing box using a ladder (a little help was needed for this manoever). Then they had to crawl through a hole into another box, through another hole into a huge box. In that box there were lots of cut up plastic garbage bag strips hanging from the ceiling to make it harder to find their way (plus it feels creepy in the dark). They crawled over bubblewrap and packing plastic foam blocks, and even had one box that went downhill (where we had steps - we put planks underneath to support the box). We'd also made holes in the sides of the boxes and taped plastic bags in these - tickle and scare holes for others to surprise the one crawling through. That was great fun!
The kids were all in agreement - this was the best part of the party!
Themed party favor bags are expensive so I generally make my own using sandwich bags and glueing a picture on them. The kids generally don't care about the packaging anyway - almost unable to wait until they're home to rip it apart to get to the contents. But still, I take some pride in the presentation :).
As you can imagine... they weren't ready to go home yet at the end of the party (mission accomplished). My son had a ball (although what he loved even more, of course, were the presents he got... o, the materialistic spirit!). Still... next year he'll have long forgotten what he got but he'll definitely still remember this party!
It was definitely worth the total exhaustion afterwards.
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