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Halloween Birthday Sleepover - Miniture Pumpkins

September 2001

Stephanie in Deltona, FL

Runner-Up

A Halloween Birthday Sleepover!  This is a perfect party for preteen girls who are either born in the month of October and have the blood of witchery flowing through their veins, or just really like Halloween. It's sure to be talked about as a spook-tacular time by all who attend!  The cost of this party should stay under 30 DOLLARS! 

Invitations: For each invitation, bake a sugar cookie and ice it orange and black, wrap in plastic wrap or cellophane, and tie with sparkly, curling gift ribbon. Tape an Index card on the bottom with party information(date, time, location, directions to your house). Ask your guests to come in their Halloween costumes and bring their sleeping bags. Send invitations two weeks in advance and avoid passing out at school as to not make the uninvited feel bad. 

Guests: Invite a maximum of 9 fun loving decent girls that get along well with each other and can bear to stay away from home (you never know?). Small parties are just as fun, easier to clean up after, and easier to attend to as big ones! 

Food: A party is nowhere without eats! For some ghostly good gobbles, try baking brownies, cupcakes, and cookies and icing them black, orange, white and yellow in the true spirit of Halloween. Have some healthy stuff on hand too, like popcorn, apple slices with peanut butter dip, and corn on the cob, or other festive fall snacks.  For dinner, serve spaghetti and meat sauce as worms and blood gravy. But let's not get too ghastly with the food Or your guests will suddenly lose their appetites! For the classic birthday cake, bake one yourself and spread white buttercream frosting (home recipe) over face and sides. Adorn with hard sugar decorations and add other effects by piping icing into any design desired (you need an icing bag). 

Decorations: Hang up white, black and orange streamers and balloons and a happy birthday banner. Play eerie music in the background. Place plastic snakes, rats, and spiders on windowsills and chairs and tables, and hang fall wreaths on every door. Autumn swags are a nice touch too.  Put fake spider webs in all corners and light a few candles. What you get is a great spooky place to hang out! 

Activities: 1. When the guests arrive, play an ice breaker like twenty questions or truth or dare (try to theme everything to Halloween).

2. Then play Pin the Tail on the Demon. On a posterboard, draw and paint a picture of a demon surrounded by flames and skulls, but missing his forked tail. Then make enough copies for everyone of a red forked tail made out of spray paint and cardboard with doublesided tape on the back so it sticks. Stand the players in a line, blindfold them, spin them round thrice, then push them in the direction of the Demon poster (hanging on the wall). See who can place the tail closest to the demon's rear end!

3. Play musical gravestones. Put old gray pillowcases over some pillows and inscribe a fake epitaph on them with permanent marker. Then put the pillows on the floor in a circle (1 less pillow for all the players). Play some seasonal music while participants walk around the circle until the music stops, which is the time they try to grab a seat. One person will be seat-less, and he will get a chance of being the DJ as consolation for being out. Game continues until a winner is found, and he is rewarded!

4. For this game, you can reuse the gravestone pillows. Keep them in a circle on the floor and start some music again. Except this time there are enough pillows for all players, and when the music stops, they must sit on the pillow nearest ahead of them. Then a parent can draw slips of paper from a bag with the names of the people who are inscribed on the gravestones written on them. If you inscribed a pillow 'Billy Bob's Gravestone' and you pick that slip, the child sitting there would claim a prize. Play a few rounds of Cemetery walk (Cake walk modification).

5. Buy a real miniature pumpkin for every guest (about 50 cents each) Supply tubs of paint chalk, and markers so the guest can design their pumpkin faces!

6. You've got to take time out now to eat dinner, eat the cake, and open presents. This should take about and hour and a half, unless your daughter wants to play with her new toys and stuff.

7. Make up little descriptions of everyone's Halloween costume and have them model it down the runway while somebody reads up! Take pictures!

8. Make s'morees and popcorn and watch a funny, scary movie that you can record from TV or rent.

9. spread out sleeping bags and tell scary stories!

10. play limbo, tag, charades, and telephone (relate to Halloween or birthday). The next morning: Offer waffles, pancakes, eggs, toast, fresh fruit, or cereal for breakfast. Talk about last night, play around with birthday girl's new toys and games, and hand out favors party hats, a mini plastic jack o lantern stuffed with candy, and black lipstick samples and black nail polish! 

These are my suggestions for a Halloween Sleepover birthday party!

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