Halloween Party

Friday night we had a Halloween party with some of the families we have gotten to know. We'd invited quite a few families, both with and without children, but we ended up having four families there, all with children, which actually turned out to be the perfect amount.


I spent most of the week planning, cleaning, cooking, and decorating. With Alice, what would take me one hour to do on my own takes five. Even when she doesn't need my attention, she's going around undoing everything I clean up! It's hard to see here but I had foam bats hanging from the ceiling--the kids loved them. I also used a bunch of fake spider webs and plastic spiders, though I could have just let our spiders run rampant for a couple of weeks and had the same effect.

What took a big chunk of time was finding music we liked. I couldn't find any good Halloween CDs that weren't too scary and had songs that were sung by the original artists, not some no name group that got together to make a CD. We ended up coming up with our own song list and purchasing the songs online. Here are the songs we chose:

1. Monster Mash
2. The Munsters
3. Harry Potter 1 "Hedwigs Theme"
4. Beetlejuice: Main Theme
5. The Addams Family
6. Love Potion #9
7. Thriller
8. Funeral March of a Marionette (Alfred Hitchcock Theme)
9. Spooky
10. Tales from the Crypt
11. Edward Scissorhands: Main Title
12. The Purple People Eater
13. Halloween
14. Rock Lobster

We mostly just talked and ate and let the kids play with toys but we did play one game that was pretty fun. I would set 5 different bars in front of a child and the parents had to guess which one the child would go for first. If they got it right, they won the candy bar. Some kids were very timid about touching them and others crawled towards them like they knew exactly what was inside those shiny wrappers. What surprised me the most was that so many of the parents picked the right candy bar. Some decision making factors were which had the shiniest wrapper and where the bar was placed (middle, far left, far right) and also the familiarity factor--which candy bar they always see their dad eating at home.