Little Monster's Ball

LITTLE MONSTER’S BALL
HOW TO THROW A HALLOWEEN PARTY FOR ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE
GHOULS AND GOBLINS

Ready to get spooky with it? Treat your family, friends and kids’ friends to a scary good time with a tricked-out Halloween party. Here, kids’ party-planning expert Lisa Kothari gives you the magic spell for a creepy-cool night of frights and fun.

A Creepy Hand Invitation
Take clear rubber gloves and fill each fingertip with a gumdrop. Fill the rest of the glove with popcorn. (The popcorn makes the hand look like it has knuckles.) Using black and orange card stock, create an invitation card with the party details written inside. Hole-punch the card and thread orange and/or black ribbon through and attach to the glove by tying the glove off with the invitation card and its ribbon. Hand-deliver these invitations to the guests.

The Spooky Scene

Construction Paper	Use construction paper to create ghosts, pumpkins, bats, spiders and other spooky creatures. Make half ghosts that peek out around corners, as an example. For the pumpkins, orange paper would make the body, brown for the stem, green for the leaves and black for the cutouts to make the face. If you are using black construction paper for the bats and black cats, use chalk rather than gel pens. If you want to make the bats and ghosts fly, punch a small hole at the top of the creations and thread a fishing line through the hole and hang over vents or near a door that is opening and closing frequently so that they fly.
Ghost Balloons	Blow up orange and black balloons; place material, such as a small white sheet, over the balloon; tie the neck with a string; and use a black marker for a ghostly face. Suspend the ghosts using fishing line attached to the ghosts’ necks.
Old Clothes	Take an old pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, work gloves, shoes, a hat and a brown paper bag to create the victim of a terrible Halloween accident. Stuff the victim with autumn leaves. The head can be the brown paper bag stuffed with the leaves, and pull the hat down over the bag to hide that there isn’t a face. Place fake blood (white Karo Syrup with red food coloring) all over the victim’s wounds as well. Either place the victim in a chair on the front porch or sitting under a tree in the front yard.
Cardboard Boxes	Make a graveyard in your front yard by using old cardboard appliance boxes. Cut them down to tombstone size, spray-paint them black, and then use white paint to outline the headstone. Using a small paintbrush, paint different, spooky, funny and anything-goes epithets on the tombs. Place them in the front yard, weighing them down with a brick.
Spiderweb	A spiderweb goes a long way in decorating any corner area of your home and/or front porch. They often come with some plastic spiders for further decorations.
Candles	Orange and black candles illuminating your home would also be an additional decoration. The small votive candles can often be purchased in bulk as well. Place orange and black candles on a reflecting mirror to add a spooky, Gothic touch.

Other Boo-tiful Decor

	Bales of hay add a festive autumnal touch to your yard.
	Mini pumpkins, gourds and corn husks always look festive this time of year. Have the kids decorate the pumpkins or stuff a mini scarecrow to add to the seasonal feel.
	Purchase a black plastic cauldron and add dry ice and a submersible light to make a spooky witch’s cauldron.
	Using different sizes of jars, fill them with water and place body parts, such as hands, eyeballs, hair, fingers, etc., into the different jars. They will look creepy!
	Have a large punch bowl in the center with a brain ice mold floating in green slime punch.
	Fill a pumpkin bowl with lots of bright candies and goodies. Play little games at the table for the kids to reach in and have a candy prize. Or, after dinner, the kids can dip their hands in for dessert. You can also use this bowl to hand out candy to your trick-or-treaters as well.

Freaky Favor
Send guests home with an oversized ghoulish cookie placed into an orange cellophane bag and tie a black tag to the cookie bag using an orange and black ribbon with a donation tag stating that “A donation has been made in your name to X Charity.” Festive and charitable all at once!

Fear Not! Just Follow These Top Tips:

1	Check with friends before you do the inviting. Halloween lands on one day each and every year, Oct. 31. It’s a short season, and many people will be planning All Hallows Eve bashes. Check with your friends and family before sending out party invitations to see if the date you choose runs into someone else’s party plan. If so, try to work out an arrangement so that both parties can still take place.
2	Leave party end time open. When you are hosting a family Halloween party, in your invitation, leave the finish time open-ended to accommodate your guests. Keep in mind that people who are bringing their kids will want to know when the kids’ activities will take place so they will be there for this fun part, and then they may need to leave for another party or because someone is tired. Other guests, especially those without children, may miss the kids’ party altogether and enjoy arriving late and staying even later.
3	Get help. At a family-style Halloween party, you will want to mix with the adults, stir potions with the kids, record the ghoulish mummy race, and take in the costume fanfare! With all of this and more, line up help. Do you have a babysitter or two available? They would be able to help you set up, run the kids’ activities, and anything else as long as you have them on hand to help. Don’t assume that your guests will pitch in on this front.
4	Announce kids’ activities when they begin. Make sure when the activities for the kids begin, you let their parents and other adults at the party know that the ghoulish fun is under way. Everyone hates missing out on the fun, and some adults may even want to be included. Make sure you have some games and/or activities in which the kids and adults interact together. For example, a stuffing-a-scarecrow relay race, eating donuts off a clothesline and/or decorating pumpkins.
5	Serve food that everyone will love. Adults will enjoy more fanciful menu items, like a delicious pumpkin soup or stew, an autumn pasta salad, corn muffins, apple and pumpkin tarts, etc. Make a few key items that your adults will rave about, but also keep in mind that the kids will be happy with a far simpler menu. Make up a batch of coffin sandwiches with popular fillings (simply use a cookie-cutter). Serve favorite snacks, but place name tags beside them with scary names, for example, Boiled Lady Bugs (red and black jelly beans) and Blood and Guts (simple pasta).
6	Be prepared to unmask. Given the season, you may request that guests don their costumes for your party. Be sure to remember that small children may be afraid of guests in their costumes. Be prepared to ask people to de-mask themselves quickly if this situation arises.
7	Supervise pumpkin carving or decorate the pumpkin instead of carving. If you are planning on having adults carve pumpkins for a party activity, make sure to supervise carefully where the knives are placed. Little ones will be running around and can easily pick up something dangerous like a carving knife as the party excitement is under way. Supervise when the carving takes place carefully to make sure an unfortunate incident does not occur.

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Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party-planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy. She has recently written and published Dear Peppers and Pollywogs…What Parents Want to Know About Planning Their Kids' Parties, which is available at www.amazon.com and www.pepperspollywogs.com.