Hosting a Costume Party

Halloween used to be my second favorite holiday, as a child. Obviously, Christmas was my favorite. I loved getting dressed up in costume for Halloween and trick-or-treating. It was the one night of the year that my parents would let me wander the dark neighborhood with friends and feast on candy when I returned. Of course, now children just aren't as safe wandering the streets without supervision.

My daughter turned seven this fall and requested a costume party for Halloween. Remembering how much I used to love to attend a costume party, I readily agreed. She came up with a list of people from her class that she wanted to invite. Suddenly, I was faced with 30 kids in costumes running around hyped up on sugar. That was a bit intimidating. However, my husband and I agreed that with the right plan, a costume party would be a huge success and everyone would have a great time. She picked out the invitations that she wanted to send to everyone, and I prepared all of them. Of course, the costume party invitations told kids to wear a costume.

In planning this Halloween themed costume party, I found some great recipes that would be perfect and started to come up with some games. I wanted to make cupcakes and decorate them with spiders and orange icing. My husband started to plan some spooky games for the girls. He said that he loved the game called "Guess What" when he went to parties. He'd have certain objects in bowls and blindfolded, the kids had to reach in and guess what they were by touching them. He would use grapes and say that they were eyeballs, slimy rice would be maggots, jello and jelly would be brains and cold spaghetti would be worms. He was having way too much fun coming up with ideas. He wanted to be sure that her first costume party would be as much fun as possible.

I filled little goody bags with treats and made some other snacks as well. My husband then decided to turn our garage into a haunted house for the kids to walk through. He spent hours out there getting prepared. My daughter was ecstatic about having her costume party. She was sure that all of the kids would be talking about it for months afterwards. Finally, the day of her costume party arrived and she was in her costume hours before anyone would arrive. She could barely contain her excitement when she was helping me to get everything ready. As the doorbell rang, one by one the kids trooped in for their costume party, all dressed up and smiling. As an adult, it was one of the most exhausting parties I've ever hosted and attended, but for her - it was a successful costume party.