Saturday, October 29, 2016

Our Halloween Gathering of 2016


 A Nightmare Before Christmas party

This year we opted for a fun Nightmare Before Christmas Party :) We immediately began to look for props and look for ideas. We found a cute printable banner and wreath ideas on Pinterest. I created the invitations using clip art and the free Nightmare Before Christmas font that I found here
We decided to have guests bring their flashlights and after creepy crafts we watched the movie and then headed outside for a themed scavenger hunt and flashlight tag!

I made a cute little Zero ghost out of pipe cleaners, cheap white fabric, cheesecloth, stuffing, and felt and small imitation pumpkins. Here he is! I love him. there are various tutorials out there but I just looked at a picture and "winged" it. (No pun intended). 
The printable banner was found here. Sally's recipe book tutorial was found here. This woman has so many great ideas and tutorials! She even has things for sale! Be sure to check her out! Her stuff is amazing! She also has free printable labels for Sally's potion jars. I bought glass and plastic jars and sprayed them a matte black then glued the labels to them. 
I was sure to get plenty of gummy worms (Oogie Boogie's Bugs), Twizzlers for Sally's hair, chocolate Chex mix with white chocolate chips for Zero's Kibble, and made little Zero cupcake toppers from fondant. I also made a great cake with jack's face and bowtie. I scanned cyberspace for ideas and settled on combining a bunch of different ideas. 

I used a black tablecloth that I cut into strips and put it across our sliding door as a curtain. I used white foam to cut out 3 skulls and used a sharpie marker to draw Jack's face and placed them in the center and sides of the curtains to hold them open. Zero was put by our slider to the backyard and I hung various purple lights and decor outside.  I got black spiderweb plates, napkins, and orange cups. Purple flatware was placed in black containers and I got a cheap black plastic cauldron and two plastic web bowls for three dollars each at stop and shop that completed the look.

The scavenger hunt cards I created and have shared them with you! Please remember to give me credit for them! Also, I have included the invitation card covers that I used. I got black cards and envelopes and glued on the inner portions and using white gel pens, wrote the guest's names and addresses on them. 
Savenger Hunt Printables
Invite Cover

The invites came out so great!!! 

For food, I made a Jack Skellington cake and used an idea found on Pinterest (I LOVE that site!) that used melted marshmallows strung around the cake to look like spiderwebs! So cute! Twizzlers were "Sally's Hair", and we had "Boo Cheese", pumpkin dip served with apples and graham crackers, little clementine oranges, Oogie's Bugs which were sour gummy worms, pizza, salad, a veggie platter, witch's hat cupcakes, and pulled pork and meatball sandwiches. We also had monster donuts (I took vampire teeth and put them in the center of them) and Caramel Apple Sangria for the adults. The table came out amazing and because I ran out of time, I realized I never took a picture of it set up! I am so disappointed, but it looked amazing- trust me. I do have pictures of the rest of the decorations though and the cake and cupcakes- at least I have those.

The kids arrived and we set them up to do a craft downstairs. 

After that, we had pizza and watched the movie, "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Since it was raining that day, I was unsure if we could do the scavenger hunt, but after the movie, we were able to do it. I hid the items during the movie and then gave 6 cards to the kids and as each item was found, the next child read their card. We then played "Pin the nose on Zero" and used the mayor's pumpkin tie as a blindfold. The kids loved it. We did have plans to do a pumpkin ring toss with glow stick rings and a pumpkin but the kids opted for a double feature instead and "Hotel Transylvania" was shown instead. Finally, flashlight tag was played outside when it got dark and they had a blast! Overall, they were amazing and everyone had fun!

Enjoy!!





















No comments:

Post a Comment