Our Halloween Party

For Halloween this year, our family planned to be in Texas with Matt, Kim, Ian & Ryan. Because we were going to be away from home, I wanted to organize an event that gave us a chance to celebrate the holiday with some friends here, too. Plus, I figured it'd be a good way to get extra use out of the boys' Halloween costumes! :)

Once I started searching Pinterest for ideas, I got more and more excited about our Halloween party possibilities. I sent out invitations to 7 of Jaden & Cody's little friends. My Cricut made the invitation-creating so easy!

For me, the prep work was half the fun! Since I'm not currently teaching, planning and organizing an event like this is a relaxing creative outlet. First, I thought through the party lunch menu-- mummy hot dogs (hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls), string cheese ghosts (with raisins for eyes), carrots, grapes, & apples (We attempted to line our apple slices with PB & marshmallow "teeth" to make mouths, but it didn't work too well.), and for the adults, tuna sand"witches" and tomato soup. For dessert, everyone enjoyed these easy-to-assemble owl cupcakes.

Next, I planned some toddler-friendly party games (hooray for Pinterest ideas!). You'll see more on these later, but here are the supplies for our pumpkin bowling game.

The night before the party, I put together simple treat bags for our little guests.

The bags included skeleton cookies, small pumpkins, Halloween erasers, and themed stickers.

The morning of the party, I put out a few pieces of holiday decor. The decoration that I was most proud of was this hand-made Halloween table runner. I found some cute candy-corn print fabric and sewed a VERY basic table runner. (My very first totally independent sewing project!)

Combined with an orange tablecloth, the decorations really stuck out!

The extra fabric (so... I'm still learning how to correctly estimate my fabric!) I used to spruce up our toddler-proof fireplace covering. Then, I added some pumpkin garland to our mantel. 

The final party to-do was putting the boys in their jailbird costumes-- definitely easier said than done! The duct tape made the onesie a little tight for fitting over the boys' heads, so dressing in costume usually involved a lot of screaming, some attempts to pin the boys down, and a lot of running away from Mommy. Whew! Once the costumes were finally on, however, Jaden and Cody were pretty happy jailbirds.

Our guests were due to arrive at 9:30 am. We had gotten several inches of snow a couple of nights earlier, so this changed our plans for a few of the games but didn't faze our guests. Jaden and Cody excitedly watched for their friends' arrival.

Once everyone arrived, group picture-taking was first on our agenda. With a group of 1 to 5-year-olds, who knew what would happen to the costumes throughout the morning? Thankfully, the kids were all in a good mood at the beginning, too! Don't these kiddos make a cute bunch?

Abbie, Landon, Jaden, Cody, Micah, Noah, Kody, Ryder

After a bit of mommy-visiting time, we were just getting ready to start the party festivities when a WAY more important event sprung up-- garbage collecting time!! Especially considering that our group was nearly all little boys, this occasion was a must-see. All the moms laughed at the boys' bright enthusiasm with watching the garbage truck journey around our cul-de-sac.

When the garbage truck was gone, we finally settled in to our party activities. First up was storytime. Jenn volunteered to read this fun sing-along story, Ten Little Pumpkins (a gift from Ian & Ryan last year-- we love it!).

Jenn has a beautiful voice, so she easily captured the kids' attention and was so fun to listen to.

Ruth read our next story, a Christian pumpkin parable called The Pumpkin Patch.

It was a bit more of a challenge to hold the kids' attention during this longer story, but Ruth knew just what to do. She had the kids do actions and make sound effects for various parts of the story. They all seemed to love it! What talented mommy-friends I have! :)

Next was game time! The bigger boys, Noah and Ryder especially got the hang of the pumpkin bowling.

After a couple of tosses, we realized it was easier to move this game into the hallway to avoid interference from the littler ones.

Our second game was a musical Ghost Footprint game. I scattered a pile of paper-Jaden-and-Cody-footprints (each containing a colored shape) all across our floor. When I started the music, the kids were allowed to run (or walk quickly) all around the room. When the music stopped, I gave them a color or a shape to find.

Because this active game encouraged a LOT of movement, it seemed to be the kids' favorite.

Even our 2-year-old guests could find the right shapes or colors. Landon usually brought the correct footprint right up to me! Here, though, Micah proudly points out his correct find.

Four-year-old Kody had no problem finding the right footprints, either.

Cody and Jaden, however, preferred to just watch the game from the sidelines. :)

Little 2-year-old Abbie was such a good sport about being the only girl at the party. She jumped right in alongside the boys to participate with all the games. We loved the fancy dress-up outfit she used for her party-girl costume.

After this active game, we moved on to a bit calmer art activity upstairs.

The kids decorated pumpkin chains with markers, crayons, and stickers. Two-year-old Ryder really got into his coloring, so his wise mommy Jenna wanted to take no chances with his costume!

Cody (pictured) and Jaden even got into the coloring a little bit. I think they were a bit hungry, though, as they soon started gnawing on all the crayons...

Two-year-old Landon wanted to think carefully about his decorations before getting started.

Abbie especially loved using the stickers to decorate her chain.

Our oldest guest, 5-year-old Noah, had the bright idea to make his pumpkin chain into a crown! He proudly presented his crown to his mommy (Jenn).

While we were finishing up the art activity, Jenna was secretly hiding small Halloween trinkets (bugs, spiders, and skeletons) downstairs. This game was originally supposed to be outside, but we weren't too excited about trudging around in our snow piles. Staying inside ended up working out just fine. The kids were supposed to find at least 5 objects each.

Jenna picked some pretty sneaky hiding spots, but these kids had no problem uncovering all the hidden objects.

Then, we moved into our last game, the Candy Corn Toss. Each mom was in charge of giving handfuls of candy corn to her children. (Amy was not going to be responsible for over-indulgence! ha ha!) Here, Landon drops some of his candy corn in the pumpkin basket.

Jaden was very interested in this game, too....

...although I think it's only because he discovered for the first time how much he loved eating candy corn! Don't you love the expressions on the older boys as they wait for Jaden to get out of their way? Noah and Kody were VERY patient with the littlest ones.

After our candy corn snacks, it was time for the REAL food. (Ryder is the only kiddo not pictured, as I forgot to take a photo until the end of the meal.)

After a VERY quick mommy-lunch, we had our final activity-- Treat-or-Treat! Each family group would take a turn sitting behind the door inside Cody & Jaden's room. Then, the kids on the outside knocked on the door...

...said "Trick-or-Treat" and were rewarded with a candy gift from each family.

I found these cute little pumpkin bags at Target to use for the candy collection.

It was so cute watching the kids hand out candy to one another.

The activity was probably good practice for all these young kids in preparation for their real trick-or-treating on Halloween night, too.

This activity concluded our party events, so most of the families were getting ready to leave. At the last minute, Noah reminded me that I had forgotten all about dessert!! I was so thankful he remembered, as I would've been very frustrated to have a dozen uneaten owl cupcakes on my countertop following the party. So of course, now that everyone was all cleaned up, we got everyone messy once again.

The kids dug right in to their owl cupcakes, though Abbie was by far our neatest eater!

Cody has certainly made some progress since his 1st birthday. His cupcake was definitely NOT untouched on this day! :)

Jaden loved his cupcake, too, although as you can tell, our busy morning was starting to take its toll...

All the guests left just in time for naptime (both theirs & ours). Other than the last-minute cupcake crumbs on the floor, my friends had helped to clean up nearly everything in the house. What a blessing it was to have such well-behaved party guests and such helpful friends. They made throwing this party a breeze! Even though Jaden and Cody didn't fully get into all the events, they definitely enjoyed the company and all the action in our home. I'm thinking we could really get into this party thing! :)