*squeeeeeeeeeeee!*

Heather just secured our tickets to the MIDNIGHT SHOWING of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire! November 17/18th, baby! Costumes! Line parties! FANDOM!

Happy Halloween is RIGHT!

Houston, we've had a party. :-)

Yesterday was a whirlwind. The day seemed to pass so quickly because there was so much to do to get ready for the party.

The house is always decorated like crazy for Halloween - that's nothing new. However, for the party this year, we added a few extra outside touches (in addition to the Halloween lights that have been up all month, of course). For starters, we lined a make-shift fence down the back and strung "Caution: Entering Haunted Area" tape along the length of it. We did it to make it easy for all the kids to know where to stop while playing, and so that they wouldn't venture into the yard of the poopy neighbors next door. We'd made the empty earth where the garden had been into a pet cemetery (think Steven King!), and we tossed a giant rat out in it to "guard" the graves. We put a life-sized, glow-in-the-dark skull in the middle of the picnic table (the boys had much fun with that earlier in the day). We also used glow-in-the-dark chalk to trace "bodies" all over our driveway, and then we roped off the area with more caution tape. We had bought a fog machine, and Philip ran it most of the night. The kids would request him to shoot them with fog, and he was more than happy to oblige. The weather was perfect all day (and night), and everything looked great!

Annie, her mom and her brother Kage arrived early to help me finish up some of the food for the party. Annie was a gorgeous Lily Potter, her mom dressed up as a glitzy Rita Skeeter, and Kage was the ever-ominous Professor Snape. Annie brought cheese and crackers, and then she helped to make "Witch's Broom Snacks" (pretzels dipped in CheeseWhiz® with Triscuit® pieces attach for the bottom). While she was doing that, Kage assisted me in making "Hot Dog Mummies" (breadstick dough wrapped and overlapping on hot dogs, then baked in the oven). Of course, lots of the guests brought party foods as well, and we ended up having SO MUCH! The list:

- Chili (I catered this in from Runza®)
- Pumpkin cupcakes (I ordered two "cakes" from Wal*Mart)
- Hot Dog Mummies
- Spider Breads (to eat with the chili)
- Witch's Broom Snacks
- Peanut Butter Pumpkins on Coconut Grass
- Chocolate Gremlins (we even made a few werewolf ones)
- BLT dip and crackers
- Scooby Snacks® crackers and bones with dip
- Cheese and crackers
- Bowl of goldfish, teddy graham, oreo and cheese nip snacks
- Kitty Cat Cookies
- Halloween cookies
- Halloween mini-cupcakes
- Bloody Eyeball cookies
- Stuffed olives
- White chicken chili cheese dip with chips
- Chips and pretzels
- Soda and juice boxes

And I'm probably forgetting something as well. In fact, since there was so much food spread out on the two tables, there wasn't even a place for all the rest of the chips! The tortilla chips were out because of the dips, but we completely forgot the other ten bags of chips in the entryway!

Folks started arriving promptly at 5:30pm, and it was already getting dark. We deposited the food stuff in the house quickly, and then we were outside and ready for games. Unfortunately, I'd not planned on Daylight Savings Time happening the day of the party, and we lost an hour of much-wanted light. :-( Still, the house lights put off enough light (or so everyone kept telling me), and the show party went on.

The kids had been running around, playing on the swingset or in the yard or checking out the little cemetery until everyone arrived. We played "Bobbing for Donuts" first, and I assigned the kids into groups of four, having the older kids play in the first round. The parent of a kid would pick a donut (three dozen Krispy Kremes, baby!) and then tie it to a string. They'd then tie the other end of the string to a monkey bar at the approximate right height for their child to be able to eat it... without using hands! The crowd all counted slowly to 25 (with me leading them in a loud voice), and the child who either finished their donut first or ate the most in the group was the winner. The game worked out just great, even in the semi-dark, and the parents seemed to really like it, too. The prizes were little Halloween-colored maracas inside a Tigger trick-or-treat pumpkin on the picnic table. :-)

For the next thing, we grown-ups corraled all of the kids over to the driveway. The kids had a fun time trying to decide which dead, chalk "body" they wanted to sit on. Once everyone was seated, we passed out clear, plastic champagne flutes for the kids to make their own Halloween goblets to take home. We handed out pipe cleaners of all colors for them to twist around the bottoms to make "handles" for the goblets, and then the kids decorated the top with star stickers. We lost a few goblets in the process, but I had plenty of extra. ;-)

By then, it really was dark, and we had to skip the peanut game altogether. Jack was a little sad about that, but I promised him the job of passing out the Halloween straws for everyone at the end of the party instead, and he cheered right up and ran off. We all trooped inside then and started serving up plates of food. Some of the kids weren't too interested in eating, and we had the doors open and the courtyard available so that we could all spread out as much as we liked. Some ate outside, some in. The house was crowded, of course, but it was GREAT kind of crowded - surrounded by friends and having an awesome time. :-)

Much later, families started to trickle out. Everyone had school today, so they had to get home early. Altogether, the party lasted about 3 hours or so. Annie, her mom and Kage all stayed later, and we played a game of Scattergories after cleaning up the food. I won. ;-D

And of course... there are pictures!


Heather and me - Ravenclaw and Slytherin students at Hogwarts, of course!
(though I think Heather herself actually has a better picture in her journal, taken by the lovely Janiece)

( More from Halloween Party 2005! )