WRONG: Had to move the party completely indoors thanks to frigid temperatures, drizzle and mud. Most of my games and activities were subsequently cut from the agenda.
RIGHT: Let the kids turn on the Wii and play "Just Dance." That game never fails to entertain. Even boys and parents were dancing.
RIGHT: Ghost cookies -- these were knockoff Nutter Butters dipped in melted white candy chips, with black sprinkles for eyes -- and witch hat cookies -- knockoff Keebler Fudge Stripes, turned upside down, with Hershey Kisses secured to them with a line of orange icing. Kids loved them.
RIGHT: Frozen party-size macaroni and cheese. I only got one of these, on a whim, and when it came down from the oven it disappeared in record time.
WRONG: The mummy dogs -- hot dogs wrapped in strips of refrigerated crescent roll dough -- didn't look like mummies at all.
WRONG: Also baking the first batch of mummy dogs on top of waxed paper was a bad idea since the paper melted and stuck to the dogs. (This was an accident, not something I did on purpose.)
RIGHT: Despite the mummy dogs' disappointing appearance, they were gobbled up -- waxed paper and all.
WRONG: Eyeball sandwiches -- two meatballs on a dinner roll, with sliced olives attached to look like the pupils of the eyeballs -- were a pain to assemble, and didn't really get eaten.
WRONG: "Pin the heart on the skeleton" game wasn't really fair since I attached to the wall a poseable cardboard skeleton and thus the blindfolded kids just had to quickly feel him up to locate where his heart should go. Only the two youngest kids missed by placing their hearts on the elbow and in the pelvis.
WRONG and RIGHT: Bobbing for donuts -- donuts tied with twine to the bottom of the ceiling light fixture -- was messy and wasteful. I ran this in three heats of four each, and the kids had to hold their hands behind their backs and try to be the first to finish eating their donuts without them falling onto the floor. The powdered donuts made a huge mess on faces and the carpet, and most kids' donuts fell onto the floor only half eaten. However, not surprisingly, this game was a huge hit.
RIGHT: Black punch in a plastic cauldron I got at Walmart hours before the party. The punch was two packages of Koolaid (two different colors that would be dark and muddy when mixed together) with the appropriate amount of sugar and water, plus two liters of ginger ale. Tasty.
WRONG: The ice hands floating in the punch did not work well. I froze water in rinsed plastic gloves, and it should have been great, but the fingers kept falling off (one of my floating hands was doing the sign of the devil) and the plastic was difficult to remove. I found a couple small pieces of plastic floating in the punch. I think using a different kind of glove would have worked better.
RIGHT: The three fog machines excited the kids and would have been very cool if we could have kept them running on their intermittent timers, but...
WRONG: The fog set off my smoke alarm twice, which is wired into the alarm system at the house and so the potential for the fire department showing up was high. So we had to set the fog machines on manual and an adult had to go flick them on from time to time.
WRONG and RIGHT: I forgot to set out the Goldfish crackers and the cheese cubes and crackers that I had gotten. However we had so freaking much food left over, it was just as well.
RIGHT and WRONG: We made these adorable Tootsie Pop spiders to be party favors. Then I forgot them in a box in my room until after all the kids had gone home.
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| Tootsie Pop spiders |
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| Ghost cookies |
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| Witch hat cookies |
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| Cupcakes decorated by the birthday girls |
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| Me and my daughter's "BFF" |
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| The "haunted hallway". Fog came out of the skull's mouth. |
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| I explain the rules of bobbing for donuts. |
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| And they're off! |
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| Pretty fun to watch! |
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| Thea opening presents |
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| The last lonely ghost cookie left on the plate. |
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| Partying! |
