Birthday Halloween Celebrations

Wow! Halloween was a blast! My (now) 8yr old had his first birthday party at home! A task I approached with nervous anticipation, 9 male of the species aged between 6 and 8 let loose in my wee hoose! Usually we do the Adventure type Funland birthdays well awaaay from home, an option I always thought was great. What could be simpler? give people the time to arrive and the time to go home and they do it! Someone else dressed like a clown will entertain and feed the mass of hungry youn'uns. All the proud parents need to do is meet, greet and take photos and go home have a large glass of red whilst congratulating ourselves for getting through it, what more can you want?

Seems however that at 8yr old, boys start having their own mind and mine definitely wanted a Halloween Spooky Fancy Dress party at home. Aggghh! the stuff of nightmares. You know what though? it was fang-tastic.

Survival Tips

We all got into the spirit dressing up but in middle of it all, one of Justy's clients arrived on the off chance to sign of on a project. I don't think he expected to be be greeted by a witch and then to be sitting discussing work with the Joker from Batman!
The food was also given nightmarish names, withered toes with blood - cocktail sausages and ketchup (courstesy of Asda mag!!) Pizza cut in triangles became fangs, popcorn- brains, frites - witches fingers.....you get the drift. Obviously themed paper plates means no washing up.

The secret of really keeping all in control though was to timetable the party to the hilt!!!!

I carefully did my homework, trawling internet sites for games ideas age suitable, here's a couple of sites I found useful http://familyfun.go.com/halloween

http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/html/halloween_party.html

As invited guests all arrive at different times I straight away got them down on the floor with huge roll of paper drawing freehand and with stencils, onto such a time that all 9 mini ghoulish guests had arrived. This was followed by wrap the mummy races (in toilet roll), bobbing apples, apple on string, pin tail on cat, conkers on string, blind mans bluff  and much more, not all were played in end but a good attempt was made (on average boys attention span was about 15-20 mins a game). The kids then set and watched the out-bits on Monsters Vs Aliens so I was treated to 9 boys singing kareoke style to 'More than a Woman' hilarious.

Birthday boy Cole, his brother Daithi and all the guests had a ball and so did we!

...and we still got to sit down that night congratulating ourselves with a very large deserved glass of red. Or was it two?