So, we threw a party....

This would be the fourth annual Halloween party we've thrown.  And maybe we don't have our creepy Kansan basement, but throwing a small Halloween movie party works too!  I scoured through the school handbooks, twice, to make sure there wasn't a particular rule, one that was critical to our party experience.  The rule that we had in Kansas- if you send invitations to school, they have to be for the whole class.  That's fair.  I get it.  Makes perfect sense.  I won't argue.  And I always went along with the rules.  But this time, with thirty-three students in the class, I wasn't excited to follow the rules.  I wasn't going to follow the rules.  So that meant, we just wouldn't be able to send invitations to school.  Which was going to make it really difficult to hand out invitations out at all in a new environment.


But that rule didn't exist.  So we were in the clear!  YAY!  And just like that, we handed out a total of seven invitations.  Six to school friends, one to the neighbors diagonally across from us.  One pack of $1 invitations from Target worked perfectly.

Then next thing you know, I started picturing how easily I could make our backyard creepy.  I'm not the sort to creepify my front yard, but the back?  Yeah, it'd be easy.  We have roses.  With thorns.  There are few things scarier.  And we have those old sheds that look like they need to become intimate friends with a bulldozer.  Yeah, I knew I could have fun with that.  So a couple trips to the Dollar Tree and the 99 cent Store and we were set!

And although it wasn't super and looked like cheap Halloween supplies were thrown up in our backyard, it was enough.  And I liked it.


On the party day, the only thing we really had to do was have the food ready and set up the table.  Fair enough.  We shoved the table against the wall with the built in hutch, and away we went.

Towards the end of summer, I had the luck of finding this beautiful drink dispenser 70% off.  I've wanted one of these for a long time and I could use it for so many parties.  Part of me wanted to use my punch fountain for the party and pretend it's blood in there, but I always stop myself when it comes to my punch fountain and chocolate fountain for Halloween.  I wouldn't be thrilled if my kid came home with chocolate and red juice all over their Halloween costume...right before Halloween.

But that dispenser was perfect.  So I slapped on a label from this eight pack I found at the 99 cent store and it looked like it was made for a Halloween party.  I got a lot of compliments on it!

Add some Fanta (one of the rare times I'll allow soda) and suddenly we had festivities in a cup.  (Sure, it could get on costumes too, but have you seen kids get punch from a fountain???!)

The party took an odd Monster High turn at some point.  Probably because most of her little friends are into Monster High, and suddenly The Redhead is too.  We even ended up buying two different Monster High movies for the party.  The cups were on clearance for 75 cents at Target though, so I couldn't resist.

I cheated on the cupcakes.  Again.  I bought the doilies and cupcake toppers at the Dollar Tree.  I already had the liners and orange sugar sprinkles.  The sprinkled bugs were from Michael's and on clearance for 49 cents.  I actually bought them the day of the party.  We had dashed to Petsmart for a costume for our perpetual toddler, and I stopped next door in case I was missing something from Michael's.

  

Obviously I was.

They didn't turn out so bad.  And now that I have a regular sized oven (the Kansan house has a wall oven), I can fit two cupcake pans in there and save time!

I actually cut out a portion of what I had originally planned to bake.  I grabbed some of the plastic hands leftover from last year's cupcake project and found a good use for them.

They slid around in the gooeyness, but that just made it all the more real!  

I also made tiny cupcakes too, because I just can't resist.

Surprisingly, it didn't take much to make this table work for the occasion.  Free tablecloth from Target, using a $3 coupon from their site, and I'd been eyeing that raven tablecloth anyway since I've been on a raven kick this Halloween.  Quoth the raven, and all.

The hanging skull in back was from the 99 cent store. 

 I loved it.

I already had the plates on hand in my party totes.

I had napkins already too, but I bought new ones anyway.  I was in love with those ravens, and the prices were cheap enough to justify them.

I already had the straws, and each year, we've had more kids at our parties than the amount of straws I had, so this year, I tossed them in one of my Pilsners.

It was cheap, but effective.  That's how I like my parties.

I'm waiting for the year The Redhead chooses a lovely costume, but until then, I will just shake my head at my scary little werewolf.

And the perpetual toddler looked really cute as a spider.  It was worth the quick trip to Petsmart.

The large furry beast wouldn't wear a costume, even if they made them her size.  (They don't.)  She likes her jingle collar though.