It all started from "Mama, so we can't celebrate Halloween this year, right?"
Yup, after having joined in Halloween parties at Kidzania for years or going to our friends' houses for gatherings, the kids were a little sad that it would be a quiet October 31st this year. So.... I decided that we shall not be defeated by the pandemic and despite it being a stay-home Halloween party right in the midst of exams, it turned out to be one of the best things we did this entire year.
It might seem like I did this solely for the sake of the kids but the truth is I am also grateful to them for letting me feel young, playful, wild and carefree, at least for a night. Yup, it's for all of us and I think we had lots of fun and joy this year or like what the kids say, it was seriously the best Halloween ever.
They were so thankful afterwards and so sweet as to ask me if I spent lots of time preparing for it. The truth is it didn't take me over two weeks to put everything together, from coming up with the ideas to doing the props and decorations. Yet, the precious memories we took home that night will stay in our hearts for a lifetime. Here's sharing more about our Halloween night, including the set-up, the costumes, the games, the trick-or-treat finale and more!
THE PREPARATION
For the first time ever, I decided to print invitation cards for my own kids! Yup, I wanted to make each of them feel special and have something to look forward to the entire week. Days before the party, they were really feeling excited and looking forward to the big day. I told them to keep their invites properly because they had to present them at the door before they could be let in. Haha.
As for the game props, I kept them to a minimum so that I didn't have to spend too much time making them. That also means I chose to play only simple games that didn't require much time to set up so that it would keep things easy for me. Simple doesn't mean no fun, in fact, some of the best games we have played over the years are the most traditional and easy-to-execute ones.
Eyeball pong was one that I was eagerly looking to and so I went to buy a packet of six white ping pong balls. After deciding that I wouldn't be able to draw the cornea realistically enough, I decided to print them out and stick them onto the balls to cover up the brand name using double sided tape. I cut a slit in each of them so they could overlap since the ball is spherical in shape and a flat sticker wouldn't be able to stick neatly, if you know what I mean. The red lines were then drawn on using a permanent red marker. I think they turned out looking quite scarily cool, right?
Keeping our tradition of doing customised labels for our drinks, I did labels for our Ribena packets and transformed them into "Vampire Blood". They never fail to fascinate the kids and make them chuckle whenever they take a sip out of it.
We also had a last minute idea to make personalised name labels for the dining chairs so that the kids could have a go at designing their own. They were really good at using calligraphy letters, bubble letters and rainbow colours to decorate their labels and even drew customised pictures on each of them. Each of them had a spooky name and I will introduce more about our characters later.
To add a Halloween touch to the food, I bought these Halloween themed cupcakes from Twelve Cupcakes and also added chocolate chips onto marshmallows to make them look like ghosts.
The kids wanted to help out in decorating the house too so I printed out dozens of Halloween related pictures including skeleton, bat, mummy, pumpkin and tombstone, cut them out and asked them to help me stick all around the house. We also turned our landscape wall into a 'Ghost Town' by sticking Halloween decals and hanging a string of pumpkin cutouts on it.
Using snakes and spiders we have in the house, the kids also hid them all around so as to add a spooky touch to our home. Yup, I think we are more or less ready to get the party started already!
Apart from a few new accessories we bought from the supermarket this year, all our costumes were put together using our stash from previous years. Yup, gotta save money on that! Our makeup was also done using face crayons and stickers that we already owned. Ariel wanted to have her face drawn so guess who did that for her? Yup, not me but the big sister! I loved seeing that sweet and heartwarming scene of them helping each other to dress up.
Anyway, what made this year extra special was that we came up with a character and name for each of us. Ladies and gentlemen, meet GIRL DEVIL, ZOMBIE SPIDER, SCARY PUMPKIN, VAMPIRE WITCH and BEAST X!
THE PLOT
To make things more interesting for the night, I came up with a story to weave all the activities together. The gist of it was that Beast X had captured Blackie the cat and the kids had to tackle a series of challenges in order to rescue it. For every station they completed, they would receive a clue in the form of an alphabet and at the end of it, they had to unscramble them to deduce the hiding spot. Simple but fun, right?
I also came up with a task list and they would receive one at the start of every activity. It would describe the challenge they had to complete, for instance the task needed, the time limit or the minimum score required. I added Halloween graphics on every of the printout and even used a 'dripping blood' backdrop too. Effort, right?
THE ACTIVITIES
Now, lets move on the the highlights of the night - the fun-filled activities!
Warm Up Dance
Firstly, in line with our family style, we did a Halloween Dance to get everyone all warmed up! For those who always drop me messages to ask, we usually dance to Just Dance videos which can be found on YouTube. This one is called "This is Halloween" and was perfect for us to kick off the party. Check out my video at the end to see us in action!
Station 1 - Halloween Colouring
For the first station, the kids were tasked to finish a Halloween themed colouring in 15 minutes. My kids have always loved colouring and this was so easy for me to prepare too - all I did was to source and print out the colouring pages followed by asking them to prepare their own colouring materials. Haha. Colouring is always a great way to begin a party, don't you think so too? Each of them was supposed to sign off their colouring sheet using their Halloween character name too.
Station 2 - Ghost Toss
I mentioned I tried to keep the games simple but that doesn't mean we can't add a spin to it. My kids love aiming and throwing balls into buckets but for that night, I let them toss GHOSTS instead. Yup, my initial plan was to use felt and beans to sew a few ghost beanbags but a with stroke of luck, I found these stuffed ghosts at Daiso, woohoo!
They were just the right size and to make things harder, I put in place bowls of varying sizes and allocated a different score for each. The kids were given two rounds of trials before we started the actual challenge where they had to work as a team and score a total of 200 points within a minute. It was fun to see them working together, running around in circles, sometimes panicking a little and then encouraging each other to score more points.
Station 3 - Eyeball Pong
Some of us might be familiar with Beer Pong but have you ever played Eyeball Pong on Halloween night? Haha. This was simple enough to set up and all we needed were the ping pong balls and some Halloween themed plastic cups big enough to fit a ball. We used our dining table for this and the kids were tasked to bounce eight eyeballs into the cups within two minutes. It's harder than it sounds and to make things even more challenging, we placed spiders and snakes on the brims of the cups as obstacles.
Station 4 - Halloween Bingo
The hubby and I have always loved playing Bingo and it seems like this love has passed on to our kids too. I knew this would be something they would love to play and was very thankful to find these printable Bingo templates. All I did was print, cut out and then laminate them so that they could be reused in future.
I initially wanted to let them use whiteboard markers to write on the laminated cards but we realised it wasn't as easy to rub off as we thought. So on the spur of the moment, I dashed to get our stash of love seeds and told the kids to use these as markers on their cards instead. Not a bad idea, right? They were bright red and looked a tad like blood droplets too. Hee. If you have any Halloween candy of the right size, you can use those instead too.
The rule of the game is simple - be the first to score five in a row, be it horizontally, vertically or diagonally, and you WIN! The catch was that the Beast was in the game too so the kids had to try to win and stop him, which definitely made them more enthusiastic and nervous. You have to raise up your hand if you are just one square away from winning and the kids were so worried when the Beast was the first to do so.
We played two rounds in total and in the first round, it was a tie between the Beast and Girl Devil. They did scissors, paper and stone to determine the winner and alas, the prize - which was a Kinder Bueno chocolate egg - was awarded to the Beast. The second round was the important one because the winner would obtain possession of two chocolate eggs and a MAGIC WAND which had the powers to banish the beast. Yup, so one of the kids had to win it in order to carry on with the challenges. You can imagine how worried they were when the Beast was the first to raise his arm again! Thankfully, the lucky Scary Pumpkin caught up and became the grand Bingo winner of the night. Woohoo!
Station 5 - Get Mummified
The kids unanimously decided this was one of the most fun parts of the night and it was easy to see why, judging by how they laughed, screamed and played non-stop at this station. The task was straightforward - transform everyone into a mommy using nothing else but toilet paper! Yup, quite a bit of paper was used at this station but at least that was the one and only resource we needed. You should see in the video how the kids couldn't stop giggling away when being mummified or when trying to mummify each other. Haha.
Once all of us were mummified, the next challenge was to do the SHIMMIE SHAKE! Yup, it's one of the kids' favorite dances but this was definitely the first time we were doing it while dressed as mummies. The idea was to boogie and shake till every piece of toilet paper came off. Haha. Sounds fun already, right? It all became a frenzy thereafter as we were tossing paper around and trying to bury each other with it. Yup, check it out in the video later, okay?
Station 6 - Halloween Craft
For the last station, it was time to sit down and do some crafts! The kids were tasked to transform toilet paper rolls into a vampire, pumpkin, mummy, vampire or bat using coloured paper, tape and goggly eyes. It was nice to take a break after all that dancing and jumping and the kids really enjoyed making their Halloween creations too.
DINNER TIME
As for our dinner, I did something which was very easy yet I knew the kids would all love - ordering McDelivery! Haha. Yup, I made my orders a day in advance so I didn't have to worry much on the day of the party itself. I personally think my kids are more keen on the games than the food when it comes to a party so that gave me an excuse not to spend too much time and effort on the food preparation but to channel more energy and fun to the activities instead.
Nonetheless, it was nice to have an interval amidst all the crazy activities and we very much enjoyed our family dinner that night. It was actually the first time I ordered McDonalds delivery to our home and that made the celebration rather special.
We also enjoyed the Halloween themed snacks and treats too, especially the marshmallows, and I think the boy could have devoured a dozen of them at a go.
SOLVING THE CLUES
Upon completing all the stations, the kids had to solve the clues to find out where they were going next! I thought I made it fairly simply by handing them letters that were jumbled up but spelt out 'LEVEL 1' when unscrambled. I guess they didn't expect that we would be heading out so they kept thinking of spots within our house instead and it made it harder when they assumed that the '1' was a 'I' so I had to give them a hint. Haha.
Anyway, they were absolutely elated when they found out we were going downstairs and little did they know that I had actually tasked the hubby to head down first to hide some treats along the way. Woohoo, that was definitely a nice surprise for the kids!
THE FINALE - TRICK OR TREAT
With our full costumes on, we made our way to the ground floor and bumped into a couple of other kids who were dressed up too. The funny thing was they found some of our hidden sweets before we did and were wondering who was so kind as to give them treats on this unusually quiet Halloween night. Of course, we were more than happy to share and after wishing them a Happy Halloween, we went on our way again.
It was just after a rain and despite the ground being wet and slippery, in addition to the fact that there were mozzies buzzing around, we still had a great time treat hunting. The kids would get all excited whenever they spotted one and together, they found Hersheys, Ferrero Rochers and gummy bears.
Besides finding the treats, the main objective of the finale was to rescue Blackie who was hidden amongst the bushes, then find the beast, use the magic wand and chant the words "Beast, Be Gone!" in order to banish him.
Aftering spotting the beast, the kids chased after him and tried to tap him with the wand as they did the chanting together. Yup, by this time, we were definitely the only family still dressed up in our neighbourhood, playing games, doing silly things and laughing heartily on this Halloween night. The hubby then removed his mask to let them know that the Beast was gone and he was once again their charming Papa. Haha.
MOVIE NIGHT
To end off the happy night, we watched a Halloween movie together as a family. Yup, it's been a while since the hubby could join us for our weekly movie nights and we were just thankful that he was with us as we relaxed on the couch after a hectic night. We chose a kid-friendly movie called Hubie's Halloween which stars Adam Sandler and ended up laughing and enjoying the show. Maybe it didn't really matter which show we picked; what was truly important was that we were together.
THE END
Yup, that marks the end of our special Halloween night. Big thanks to the hubby for being so sporty to act the role of the Beast when I first pitched the idea to him (I initially called him Monster X and he suggested why not change it to Beast since he had a werewolf mask, haha) and to the kids for being so spontaneous, cooperative and fun to be with throughout the whole evening. They acceded to my requests to take family photos and were so game as to take all the videos I asked them to, which contributed to the success of the event and the final video that I made to remember this night.
Thanks for sharing our Halloween joy and let's see if we can do this again next year when we have not one, not two, not three but four kids to handle! Woohoo! Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend too!