Halloween is one of your kids’ most eagerly anticipated calendar events, a very close runner-up to Christmas and birthdays. Huge hauls of treats, spectacular dressing-up costumes, the excitement of being out after dark with all your friends, what’s not to love?
Whether you’re a Halloween lover or simply recognise that ‘if the kids are happy’, hosting a Halloween party is a fabulous way to embrace the fun and create a treasure chest of memories with your kids.
Here’s how to make your party spooktacularly successful for everybody.
Enchanting Halloween costumes
Kids love dressing up. So if you ever entertained the idea of getting away with dressing them up in a white sheet and some vampire fangs or sending them out as a ‘mummy’ in billowing loo roll, don’t. Just don’t. Head to Sainsbury’s (online and in store) for affordable and frighteningly fabulous costumes from witches to vampires and glow-in-the-dark skeleton costumes with lights too! You can rest assured that all the dress-up costumes have been safety tested and meet the British Nightwear Flammability safety standard.
Munchies for your little monsters
Halloween wouldn’t be such a favourite for kids without treats. You can give some extra spook appeal to healthier offerings, like ‘bloody’ raspberry puree or ‘snot’ passion fruit served with ghostly boo-nannas, sandwiching mini marshmallow ‘zombie teeth’ between apple pieces spread with chocolate spread and making cute mini pumpkins with black marker pen faces on satsumas.
Add extra excitement with some thrilling presentation tricks. Fill ice cube trays with individual plastic spiders for spider cubes, add a drop of green food colouring to popcorn before you start popping to make enticingly realistic ‘witches’ bogies’ and wrap paper cups in white bandage gauze for scary cups.
Halloween themed party cups, plates and napkins will add excitement to your fiendish food offerings - and make clearing up 100% less of a nightmare for you. Keep rolls of kitchen roll at hand for all those sticky hands and faces!
You can stock up on ghoulishly great Halloween themed party foods and party tableware at Sainsbury’s.
Thrilling party games
Even though kids have a magical way of entertaining themselves, it’s worth having a few party games up your witch’s sleeve. Work off some of that energy with a dance contest and Halloween themed party games like Apple Bobbing, the always hilarious Blindfold Jelly Eating (when two children try to spoon jelly into each other’s mouths) and Make a Mummy relays (when competing teams have to mummify a team member in a roll of loo roll in a 60 second countdown).
For calm-down time, make masks with paper plates hole punched on either sides, threaded with elastic, and decorated individually with felt tip pens, glitter, feathers and any arts and crafts kit you have hanging round the house. Award prizes for the spookiest and most inventive.
Set that spooky scene
Cast a spell on your home with decorations to rival Morticia Addams’ thrilling home style. Halloween falls on a Monday this year, so you’ve got a whole weekend to ramp up the excitement, perfect that carved pumpkin and get your kids to help create a suitably spooky haunted home with spider webbed doorways to push through and lots of homemade decorations.
You can make ghost balloons by letting them loose with a balloon pump and as many white balloons as they can inflate. Then draw ghoulish and gruesome faces using marker pens and tie them up in your entrance and around the party room.
Or cut ghostly shapes out of white card, then get the kids to draw spooky faces on the shapes with black felt tip pen. Hole punch the top of each ghost and thread onto orange or black ribbon for homemade spooky bunting.
Get your party jumping with a themed playlist, including classics like Monster Mash, Ghostbusters and The Addams Family Theme tune. You can even add ‘spooky laughter’ onto your Spotify list to set the scene for guests. Get yourselves to Sainsbury’s for lots of fabulous Halloween decorations to deck your home.
Even if you don’t fancy a Halloween party this year, get into the Halloween spirit by going trick or treating with friends and neighbours. Just don’t expect your kids to want the evening to ever end!