A COUPLE of months ago, without really thinking about it, I asked Stew if we should throw a Halloween party. On a bit of a whim I messaged my mummy group to ask if anyone would be up for it, and all of a sudden it was on. Sunday, October 30 at our house, with eight toddlers. And then I forgot about it for a while.
All of a sudden, the party week was upon us, and I had nothing prepared. I wasn’t worried because I’d been scouring Pinterest and had a few images pinned … but hadn’t actually got down to proper planning. Somehow it all came together in the end, and nine toddlers had a great time trashing our house (and apparently following a ghost, but that’s another story…) So, here’s how to throw a Halloween party with not much planning…
Decorations:
Decorating the house was quite difficult as we didn’t want to have to explain to two-year-olds what vampires, coffins etc are, and didn’t want them to be scared by monsters. So we went for a pumpkin, bats and spiders theme in purple, black and orange. We only really decorated one room to keep the work to a minimum.
Home Bargains and Asda saved us with inexpensive banners, cupcake cases and a stand, and a couple of bags of spiders and bats, which we scattered around the place. We even picked up a spooky menu for 79p!
Food:
Looking online you can find hundreds of ideas for Halloween themed party snacks, but we decided to choose a couple of simple things that wouldn’t take up too much time in the morning. Believe me, cutting out pepper fingernails with the “help” of a toddler is no easy task!
We ended up with finger sandwiches, ghost bananas, pumpkin tangerines, monster cheese wraps, and cupcakes iced in purple and grey.
The wraps were super easy to make, although a bit fiddly attaching the eyes to cocktail sticks – we did that the day before to save time on the party day. They also help to stop the wraps from flapping open and making a mess. Stew made the banana ghosts with chocolate chips, and the pumpkins are tangerines with asparagus stalks (we’d seen celery used online too).
Activities:
Being two-year-olds, there wasn’t much point in organising too many activities as they would get distracted easily and prefer to just play. We created a spooky lucky dip by dyeing spaghetti with food colouring and adding chocolate eye balls and pumpkins, as well as a few plastic spiders. It’s a good idea to have wipes on hand as the food colouring comes off onto your hands as you rummage for chocolates.
Craft-wise, we set up a little table with coloured pencils and ghost shaped print-outs, as well as monster-making. I painted a load of cardboard rolls in advance to cut down on mess, and put out googly eyes, pipe cleaners for arms and coloured feathers for hair. These are really simple to make, but quite cute I think!
We also played musical bumps, did the Hokey Cokey and sleeping bunnies, and the rest of the party was free play.
Nice and simple, and I think everyone enjoyed!
