A Very Scary Birthday Party

One of my goals in 2010 was to become a better birthday party mom. I have always been the type of mom who throws things together at the last minute, and my children’s birthday parties were never planned out very well. I’d send out invitations according to whatever theme my child chose, then on the morning of the party I would realize I needed to actually plan something, run out and buy a piñata and some candy and then make up one or two games, and hurriedly make a cake. At the party, once any games were exhausted and the piñata had been broken, we would open gifts and eat cake. And then there would usually be an hour left of the scheduled time in which I would just let the kids go play.

That worked for a while, but my girls are getting a little older and they started asking for better parties. Now, perhaps in my quest to simplify my life and embrace imperfection, doing a better birthday party doesn’t fit in. But, it’s for my kids, and they are most important, so I vowed to put on a fabulous party for each of them, starting with my oldest daughter’s 10th birthday in October 2010.

And I tried. I planned more, but I still ended up doing everything the day of. I guess that’s just how I work. But according to my daughter, the party was a smashing success…

The favor bags, which mostly held little Halloween items and one piece of candy. (Also, a little sewing kit, which was what my daughter really wanted them to have.) They drew slips of paper at the end of the party that said either “Trick” or “Treat” on them. If they got “Trick” then they had to do some sort of trick for me in order to get their favor bag, but if they got “Treat” I just gave it to them. The kids loved this and all of them wanted to do a trick or two!

The cake. I did much better at actually planning it this year…I thought it would be fun to make it look kind of like candy corn inside. I did my best to decorate it as Halloweeny as possible.

Pretty cool, eh?

I made bone breadsticks, and spider juice (didn’t get a picture) along with the cake. We also played a “guess how much candy” is in the jar game and did a few fun Halloween crafts (didn’t get pictures of those, either)

The girls all wore their Halloween costumes, and we had a costume contest. The winners? The vampires tied for scariest, the jellyfish for cutest and the alien for silliest.

The obligatory blowing out candles picture.

When all was said and done, I only had to make up games for about 20 minutes of the 2 hours the party was planned. Who knew making two Halloween crafts and playing about 6 games would only take an hour? Sheesh!  But, this is the best birthday party I’ve planned since she turned 3 and I went all out on a Wiggles party for her.