A Halloween Birthday Party

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to kick off a new week.  It was a great weekend around here, and we celebrated my daughter’s 8th birthday with a Halloween/costume party themed birthday party (even though her birthday was earlier this month).  I’m thinking I need to go this route every year, as it’s so easy (and fun) to come up with Halloween themed activities!

We went with a cute party invitation from Shutterfly.

My daughter went with a vampire costume this year – a stark departure from her usual (more girly) choices.

We had a lot of fun putting together the party games and gift bags.  We had goodie bags for all of the girls ready to go:

I found cute little Halloween brads in the scrapbooking section of Hobby Lobby, that paired up nicely with the ribbon we found to embellish the orange bags-o-treats.

And fun Halloween prize bags that I scored from Target to hold the party prizes.  At $1 each, I couldn’t pass them up!  (The bat is my favorite.)

I spotted some adorable cupcake ideas from Better Homes and Gardens via their Pinterest page, and showed them to my uber-creative and talented friend, Vanessa.  She has been taking a cake decorating class, and whipped up these adorable cupcakes.

Aren’t they the cutest?

I made sure to have party games ready to keep these girls occupied, and found a great resource here.  We played Hot Potato (using a small pumpkin, of course), and a version of Halloween Bingo (a good call, since they had to sit still and listen). 😉

I managed to gather the girls for a photo op:

But not without the dog getting in on the party action with a photo bomb…

He made sure to take advantage of all of their attention.

Then I let the girls get their crazy on.

Suffice to say, I was pooped out after the party, but it was so much fun to plan it with my daughter.  She appreciates the details that go into it and was as enthusiastic about it as I was.

Any tips on surviving future crazy girl parties? 😉  Next time I will invest in more helpers – I underestimated the Crazy Factor when it comes to corralling 16 second graders.  My husband had to take my oldest to a baseball tournament game, so my 12 year-old was my backup support.  Lesson learned!

Linking up:
A Stroll Thru Life – Inspire Me Tuesday