How to Host a Spooky Halloween Party

Halloween is always a great time. Fall is beginning and leaves are falling. One fun way to celebrate Halloween is to have a get together. Your party should start at dark, since Halloween is not a holiday that begins at midnight. Also, depending on the day of the week Halloween falls on, you may have trick-or-treaters as early as dusk, since some might have school the next day. Here are a few tips to host a spooky but not terrifying Halloween Party that kids of all ages will enjoy.

In order to keep the party kid friendly, you do not want anything scary- such as people jumping out at them. We use a Halloween CD and pipe music both outside and indoors. We use orange and purple lights to line our front door and string them across the walls inside of our house. If you dim the lights (or even turn them off) the lights make a great visual display. You can also replace white light bulbs with black bulbs that let off a soft glow.

As far as food, we usually make a smorgasbord of snacks and desserts for everyone to munch on. We make a pumpkin pizza for our guests. To make this we use a pre-made crust. Put pizza sauce on the crust. Add shredded cheddar cheese. The cheddar cheese will give the orange color to the pumpkin pizza. Next add sliced black olives to form the mouth, nose and eyes. Add chopped green peppers to create the stem. Bake in the oven according to the directions on the crust.

Next we make ghosts. This is extremely simple. Make mashed potatoes like you would normally. Make sure if it not too clumpy. Add the mashed potatoes to a gallon size zip lock type bag. Snip the tip off of the bag. Squeeze the mashed potatoes onto a plate. You might have to play with it a few times to get it right. The ghost should be about 2-3 inches tall in order to stay upright. If you do not make it tall enough, it will look like, well, mashed potatoes. If you make it too tall, it will tip over. Finish the ghost by adding either pieces of black olives or whole pieces of pepper to make the eyes. (This also works well to create snowmen during Christmas.)

For drinks, we like to make witches brew. In a punch bowl, add one pint to one gallon of sherbet. We use raspberry flavored sherbet. Next add 2 - 2 liters of ginger ale or Sprite to the sherbet. You can add some food coloring to make the punch even darker in color. You can also add some plastic bones or plastic bugs to the bowl. You can pick up some items to add to the punch at a novelty show. I usually add the spider rings to our punch.

Younger kids will not drink the witches brew because of the color. For this, I usually keep some Sprite on hand and add a few colored ice cubes to their drink. You can make colored ice by freezing Kool-Aid in ice cube trays. You might even be able to find some chocolate molds that you can use to make ice. The younger kids love this because they have their own drink that is "scary".

Make eyeballs out of grapes by peeling green grapes. It is surprising how much peeled grapes can look and appear like eyes. Put a whole bunch of them in a bowl.

For dessert, in the past I have made graveyard cake. This is a form of dirt cake. I make the cake according to the recipe (listed below). Once the cake is finished, get some gummy worms and hang them over the edge of the cake pan. Make a headstone. Cut out a headstone shape from cardboard. Cover it with white paper (if you don't have any, use the inside of wrapping paper. Be creative. Add some catchy saying to the headstone- such as "Here lies mom, who died when she saw her kids doing their homework". Something cute that is not scary to young kids. Tape this to the back of a skewer stick (since these are longer than toothpicks.) Place in cake. Add some bones on top. You can even purchase the molds to make chocolate bones and reuse them to make your ice for the kids drinks.

These are a few examples of throwing a kid friendly Halloween Party. You can probably think of some additional things to make or variations to these recipes.

Graveyard Cake:

2 packages of Oreo cookies
1/2 stick butter
8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
3 1/2 cups milk
2 small French Vanilla Instant Pudding boxes (Can also use Chocolate for more dirt effect)
12 oz Cool Whip

Let butter sit out for a while to soften. Mix butter, powdered sugar and cream cheese together. Next make the pudding. Use only the 3 1/2 cups of milk (even though the recipe on the pudding box calls for more). Once pudding mix and milk is combined, add the Cool Whip to the pudding mixture. Add the pudding and the cream cheese mixture together.

Next crush the Oreo's. The best way to do this is to but them into a food processor. The Oreo's need to be finely ground-up - about the size of uncooked grits.

Mix the Oreo's into the mixture and spread it into a cake pan (11 X 7 cake pan).

Next make grass by color sugar green. You can do this by placing 1 cup of sugar into a bowl and adding green food coloring. Add about 20 drops of green food color to the sugar. Mix it well with either a toothpick or a skewer. You can add more food color to make the sugar "grass" darker. Once you are happy with the green color, spread over top of cake. Enjoy !!