Costume Ideas for Couples

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Planning your kids’ Halloween party need not be bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Here are ideas and recipes for a unique party that your little witches and warlocks will talk about for months to come.

When planning a Halloween party, the first thing to do is to send invitations. You can make invitations easily using your home computer and, if your children are old enough, they may like to design and print these themselves.

To avoid the frustration of people arriving at your party who have not RSVP’d, a good tip is to purposely omit the party’s commencement time from the invitation. Instead, add the line, ‘Please RSVP to know the party’s start time’ – this should significantly decrease the number of ‘gatecrashers’.

Costumes are next on the ‘to-do’ list and to kids this is one of the most exciting aspects of Halloween. Before talking with your children about the options, bear the following in mind:-

• Select a costume for your child that won’t disintegrate before the night’s festivities are over and one that won’t make the child feel too hot or cold.

• For safety’s sake, ensure the costume will not hamper your child’s movement.

• Face paint is a safer alternative to a visibility-impairing mask.

• If the costume is elaborate, dress your child in simple clothing underneath. This way they can easily slip out of it to play games, take a break or visit the toilet.

Costumes can be purchased, hired or home-made. If you’re considering the latter, there are hundreds of websites with a glut of unique ideas – head for Google!

As with any party, you can either keep the décor simple with streamers and balloons or go all out and create your own Haunted House. When planning the party’s décor, do consider the ages of the children attending. Younger ones may find just a few hanging bats sufficiently scary, while most teenagers enjoy a heavily themed venue with scary ambient music and sound effects.

Store-bought cobwebs and dimmed lights are wonderful additions to the Halloween atmosphere too. Older kids delight in sitting down to eat at a themed party table. All you need is a black or purple tablecloth, a vase of dead flowers, tealight candles and a scattering of small party favours to set the scene for a ghoulish supper. If the table is not large enough to accommodate all your guests, use it to display your food and beverages and provide a buffet meal.

What would a party be without food? A quick Google search will result in many Halloween recipes for some superb but gruesome sounding food including Kitty-litter Cake, Baked Bones and Dracula's Blood Pudding. You can really get creative when it comes to Halloween food but it’s best to keep it simple and not too gross-sounding for the younger elementary ages.

When it comes to drinks, a Halloween party isn’t complete without a bowl of punch. Maybe you’d like to try a Blood Bath? This is made by mixing 64 ounces of cran-raspberry cocktail and four cups of apple juice with four cups of vanilla ice cream. Or perhaps you would prefer a Toxic Punch? For this combine four litres of chilled green lemon-lime soda, 24 ounces of orange juice concentrate, two packets of blue Kool-Aid and a few drops of green food colouring.

When planning your Halloween children’s party, prepare two to three games ahead of time. It’s also a good idea to have an extra little game or activity ready just in case. Children can be unpredictable (no way – I hear you say!) and you need to be flexible – so, if a game is not working or is not being enjoyed, having a back-up means that you can easily substitute one with another.

Many well known party games can be given a Halloween twist – for instance Pin the Hat on the Witch and Pass the Pumpkin. Halloween’s classic game however is Bobbing for Apples in a bowl of water. At our parties we quickly follow this (with faces still wet) with a game of Bobbing for Marshmallows – on a plate of flour.

As an activity, making ‘Ectoplasm’ is always a big Halloween party hit. This eerie substance is made by combining two cups of cornstarch, one cup of water and a few drops of green food colouring. It is made in seconds, is a great consistency to play with and guests can also take some home in a sturdy zip-lock bag!

It is always a good idea to provide a quiet corner at parties for children who are not into games. Crayons, some colouring-in sheets, a batch of play dough and a few biscuit-cutters will keep little hands occupied. At sites like Hello Kitty Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Hello Kitty coloring sheetwhile little boys would perhaps enjoy the coloring sheets at Pokemon Coloring Pages.

As an entertaining extra activity, fill a plastic jar with sweets and have each guest write their best guess as to how many are in the jar. This is a good game to play at the beginning of the party, as guests filter in. Announce the winner at the end of the party – the champion wins the jar! As your guests leave, surprise them with some spooky treats to take home.

One of the simplest and most effective inclusions in the traditional goody bag of sweets and chocolates is the Ghost Pop. Place a square piece of white tissue paper (or kitchen roll paper) over a lollipop, tie with a small elastic to make a head and then use a black marker to draw eyes on the ghost. These small treats also make great prizes for games.

Finally, remember to charge your camera and camcorder and capture each spell-binding moment.

Halloween will soon be here and many parents are wondering how and where to celebrate this spooky annual event.

When it comes to Halloween, there is no lack of variety in what is available. From trick or treating to hosting a scary movie marathon, finding something not to do would actually be more of a challenge! Here are some frightfully good ideas that will make for an interesting evening.

If you live in a friendly neighbourhood, you could consider trick or treating. This works especially well if you give advance notice to your neighbours of your intentions by leaving a note on their doorstep a few days before Halloween. Certain neighbourhoods, appartment blocks and gated communities really make an effort to be prepared with treats and some even decorate their front gardens. My children still remember the house of the guy who turned his whole front yard into a dark catacomb and who then sat quietly in the dark as we walked up the path before scaring us all half to death!

If Halloween falls on a school night this year, young children who need an early night will still feel as though they celebrated if you set up a few special treats, some arts and crafts and perhaps a fun movie before bedtime.

Print a few coloring pages and activities for them based on their favourite characters, for instance little girls love princesses and fairies and at sites like Princess Coloring Pages you’ll find the best princess coloring pages meanwhile at Spongebob Squarepants Coloring Pages you’ll find heaps of coloring pages of Bikini Bottom’s most absorbent dweller!

Halloween fancy dress parties are great to both host and attend and if you are stuck for costume ideas, again – head for Google and do an image search! If you have teenagers, they may scoff at the thought of having a Halloween party but may like the thought of a night of terror and suspense. Depending on their age, you could arrange to rent DVDs of movies such as Hocus Pocus, Psycho or the Blair Witch Project. Just add a bunch of their best friends, popcorn, soda and a pizza delivery for instant teenage heaven.

Scour the web elsewhere too for a variety of activities including paper plate pumpkins and pipe cleaner spiders. Older children may enjoy making slime with two cups of water, half a cup of cornstarch and a few drops of red or green food colouring.

Murder mystery dinner parties are great fun and if you pick one with a Chinese, Indian or Italian theme you don’t even have to cook – you can just order a home delivery from your local Chinese or Indian take-away or from your favourite pizza place. Choose fun guest with a sense of humour and who will get into the spirit of the evening by dressing up and taking on the mannerisms and accent of the character you have chosen for them and you are in for a memorable evening.

To spend the evening playing games with family is also a great way to pass the time. Board games such as Cluedo or the types of jigsaw puzzles that involve solving riddles are just perfect. Prepare some themed nibbles and a few drinks and you will have spent some true Halloween quality time together.

These are just a few ideas that will keep you occupied this eerie evening – happy howling!

It’s going to be your child’s birthday soon! As the day is fast approaching, you find yourself searching for ways to make the celebration extra special more than your child had in his previous birthdays. But you know that you are not the expert in planning a birthday party, every time you plan a birthday party you are back to frustrating moments again.

It’s good to know that planning a birthday party is not that hard, here are some tips to make the birthday bash as fun and memorable the way you planned it to be.

Brainstorming

To plan a birthday party means to come up with bright ideas with your spouse and the rest of your children. If you’re going to celebrate a first birthday party for your only child, ideas from other family members, friends and relatives would certainly matter. Asking others for ideas could help make your planning faster and more fool-proof. Remember, planning a birthday party for your kid requires not only one idea from one person but a group effort devised by people involved in the planning and brainstorming stage.

Derive a Checklist
Once you are done with brainstorming, you need to look for party supplies. From the cake, foods, refreshments, venue, number of guests; they must be included in your checklist. Having a notebook will help you to make the planning organized. If you plan for a party, writing down the details will play a big role at the planning stage. This is also the time where you can consider things properly. If you are aiming for a particular cake for the party, you can compare prices and list cake prices down on your checklist. This will facilitate in creating a well thought out details for your kid’s party. Lastly, if you don’t want to miss a single detail for the big day, providing a checklist will contribute a big difference.

Sending Out The Invites
The party will not be complete without invitations for the guests. Organizing a kid’s birthday party would mean that guests mostly involve little children the same age as your child accompanied by their parents or guardians. Keep this in mind, you need to count in the number of people that will accompany a child in the party. Ensure that you also send the cards at least 2 weeks before the party. This will give guests the chance to arrange their schedules and spend time with your child’s birthday bash.

The Actual Day
Planning doesn’t stop at the actual day of the party. The day of the party is the execution of your program. Organizing a birthday party is to be in constant monitor of the whole party until it comes to an end, do not panick if anything goes wrong. If you have planned for emergencies you shouldn’t worry too much.

Planning a birthday party is not easy, but all your effort and planning will be worthwhile just by seeing a smile on your child’s face as he whoops it up and enjoy his big day.

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