Halloween Party

I have heard people say before that they feel scared to be in their own homes at Halloween but never in a million years did I expect to be in that position myself. 

Wednesday night was most definitely an eye opener for me in to the more sinister side of Halloween. No, it wasn’t some awful prank played on me by some random trick or treater, there were no eggs thrown at my house, no fireworks posted through my letterbox and no teenagers standing on my doorstep demanding money. Instead there were seventeen, sugar high, face paint covered, excitable under 8’s running riot around my house.

Terrified as I was, they all had an amazing time and here is how we planned our first ever Halloween Party. 

Firstly I scoured the internet for Ideas. I made a Pinterest board dedicated to our Party and used this to keep all of my ideas together. 

We didn't have a lot of money to spend so I knew that the majority of our decorations would need to be hand made.This proved to be so much more rewarding than I realised. We managed to make a day of it with some friends and also did a lot together as a family.

Here area selection of our Halloween Projects, hopefully they will help to give you ideas for your own Parties. Enjoy.

I had a photo frame that I had been planning to put some pictures in but I hadn't gotten round to it. It caught my eye one day and it suddenly hit me that I could use it to make a really simple Halloween decoration. I painted my face up (this was the same moment that I spoke about here) Then I took a few snaps and printed them off. Ta Da...

The finished framed decoration adorning my wall...

 

Super simple and while I now plan to use the frame for it's originally intended use, I have saved the creepy pictures to put back in next year.

Next, as it was a childrens party I thought that we would need some party games. We drink a LOT of innocent fruit juice, and so we always have plastic bottles for the recycling and H continually tells me that we should recycle them ourselves... and so we did.

Juice Bottles + PVA Glue + Cheap Toilet Roll + Paint = Spooky Ghost Skittles. We also made some Witches that we filled with sand for a hoop throwing game. These were really easy to make and H and F both love them.

 

By this point I was in full Blue Peter mode and excited to see what else I could transform with some more PVA and cheap loo roll. Using a selection of empty jars, I covered the lids with PVA and toilet roll, painted them all different colours, and filled them with bits and bobs - Some water dyed with food colouring containing the broken arms from last years skeleton decoration, a handful of plastic spiders and some fabric spider webbing, some plastic toy eggs that I painted eyes on to, a couple of plastic animals suspended in clear jelly (made from gelatine sheets) and we left one jar empty. It contained an invisible frog.

A few more jars, a bit more PVA and some crepe paper and I made some jar lanterns to put tea lights in. These where really fun to make and I finished them off with some glitter and ribbon from our craft box. The witches hat in the window was made using black paper and sweetie wrappers that I had saved. The standing whitches hat was made using the black circle base from a frozen pizza, a plastic container from the supermarket that had contained veg, and some more black paper. I cut stars out of it and left a hole just big enough to drop in a glow stick. We melted wax on to some bottles and one of my amazing friends made these uber cute, toilet roll bat and Frankenstein.

 

One of the most effective decorations that we made was also one of the easiest. I cut 26 black bats out of black paper and stuck them all around the house. 

A bit more up-cycling saw us come up with this coffin using the boxes from our new sledge (possibly bought a little prematurely in August)

Thinking we were on a roll with the carboard box creations we decided to make a Witches House with an extra large box that we had, we asked Daddy to make a wooden structure to hold it up as it was sagging somewhat, and the next thing we knew he was dragging through to unneeded sheets of plasterboard that we had lying around following a DIY project, they were slightly warped and so couldn't have been used for anything else anyway and he quickly knocked together a whitches house for us. A bit of paint and it was almost perfect. 

The finishing touches came courtesy of a Beware Sign made from yet another old box and a scrap of parcel string, A fabulous glow in the dark rug from Plantation Rug Company and of course a Witch.

Made using, yip, you guessed it ANOTHER cardboard box, folded so it would stand and 'dressed' in H's halloween costume from last year. If you look closely through the window you will see her.

A bit of food and we were ready to go. An Ice hand in our Bats Blood (Ribena) Spider and Ghost cake pops and some creepy cakes. I bought some lovely little bat cake decorations but quite a few of them were broken so I used them as teeth when I made my 'monster face' cakes. These went down a treat with the children.

 

I hope that some of this has been useful/inspiring. It is amazing what you can pull of on a budget by having a homemade Halloween. If you found this interesting then you might like to read about my Homemade Cat Costume, this years Homemade Wolf Costume and the future use of the Witches House.