Halloween - K's Party

Today we hosted K's Halloween party. As you may recall, the party was meant to be earlier in the week, but then K got sick so we rescheduled for today. This is probably a blessing in disguise, because these kids were so wound up, I doubt many of them got to bed at their normal bedtime. Having the party on a Friday night is probably better than during the week.

We ended up with six three-year olds, two one-year olds, and T for a grand total of nine kids (counting T is a bit cheating, I suppose). I'm beat. This post, just like the post from the party a few days ago, is going to be a huge one full of photos!

Let's start with the food! I decided that this party would have a bit of a monster theme going on, so I started with some monster sugar cookies. I used my regular recipe, but to make things a bit easier I only did three colors of frosting.

I started by making a ton of little eyes out of royal icing. I did these last week so they had plenty of time to dry out. Once they are dry, they just pop off the parchment. Simple. I did them in a variety of shapes, some with the pupil straight, others where the pupil is off to the side.

Once the cookies were all baked, I divided them into three groups to make the frosting bit easier. I didn't end up with all of one color and I didn't even have to think about it. I also separated the eyeballs by size so that adding them to the cookies would be simple.

 

It was pretty fast to get these all decorated since it was just one color for the entire cookie. All I had to do then was add a few eyeballs here and there. 

 

To make them a tad bit more interesting, I took a toothpick and made spikes on some of the cookies. Once they were fully dry, I added black mouths and a few of them even got little teeth.

They looked so cute as a little set. The kids ate these up like nobody's biz. The moms kept commenting on how cute they were. Success!

 

The other food that I made for the party was monster brownies. I thought it would be fun to have pre-frosted brownies with some little toppings so that the kids could make their own monsters. I started off by making some brownies. I used a new recipe, but to be honest, I didn't love it, so I won't bother sharing the link. 

 

 

They taste fine, but that delicious, delicate, crunchy layer on top got really thick. This made them really difficult to cut. Thank goodness I had planned on frosting them.

 

 

Also, they were super sweet (and that's saying a lot coming from me). Because of that, I made the frosting on the not-very-sweet-side. I did a cream cheese frosting with 226g of cream cheese, 42g of butter and just one cup of powdered sugar. Then I colored the frosting, again doing three different colors, and frosted all of the brownies.

 

  

Since there were nine brownies, but only six kids (of partying age), I did up three monsters as examples.

 

 

I think this was my favorite part of the party. The kids were so funny making their little monsters. K used only yellow on his, but then decided to add some brown hair.

 

 

Another boy spent ages making his face and then when it was all done, he took a big handful of coconut, put it right on top, and said, "haha, I covered his face." One little girl didn't do too much to her brownie, but just loaded her plate with M&Ms and other candies. They were cracking me up!

 

 

 

Aside from brownie decorating, I thought it would be fun to do a little craft. I wanted something that would be easy and quick. I came up with little painted jars. I often save glass jars just in case I need it for something and luckily I did, because it meant I was able to do this craft with the kids.

 



A few weeks ago, I tested this out to see if it would work and lo and behold it did. I put a few drops of acrylic paint into the jar and then added a few drops of water.

Then I put the lid on and shook it up a lot.

Eventually the whole jar got covered. I found, however, that with the lid on, the paint would slide down the edges of the jar. So, I would shake it up, open the lid and let it dry out a bit. Then I repeated that about a million times until the paint was fully dry. Once they were all dried out, I drew little faces on them and that was that. While I didn't take any photos at the party, this ended up working out well. It was quick and easy and the kids seemed to have fun drawing on the faces. That being said, we didn't open them to let them dry. Moms can deal with that at home.

We also did the ghost bowling. It wasn't very structured at all, as the kids seemed to have a difficult time with it, but it was cute nonetheless. After they knocked down all of the ghosts (they just kept throwing the ball until all of the ghosts were down), they got a candy necklace, extremely similar to the ones my friend made.

 I got a roll of cellophane wrapping and cut it into six strips. I started by putting a little tape divider right in the middle.

Then I added a piece of candy, put another tape divider, then did that again.

Then I went to the other side and did the same. Finally, I put in the two end pieces and used a different patterned tape to connect the ends together.

Then I made five more of them.

Just like at the last party, the kids seemed to like these. After everyone had left, the doorbell rang and it turned out that one of the boys forgot his and wanted to come back to get it. What a bunch of cuties.

The party was full of crafts, games, food, and playing, but I am pretty sure K's favorite part was when he was sitting with his best friend (first love??), eating snacks and playing with each others' feet.

 

And just like that, Halloween 2013 is over. I always think that I'll make sugar skulls for Day of the Dead as well, but that has yet to happen. Next year, perhaps?