Halloween @ our house

 A   Last year we decided to have a fun Halloween evening for the kids. Although we don’t really do the Halloween-thing here in South Africa as much as it is done in the US, my kids have grown up with it {having cousins living in the US}.

We couldn’t go from house to house collecting sweet treats as unless it is organised in one of the estates, no one does it. In our previous home, we used to have trick or treating each year as the estate we lived in organised a fun evening for the kids and they could safely go from house to house collecting goodies.

In our new home, our estate is simply too big and the houses are too far apart for any trick or treating to take place.

So I invited some friends & family over and asked each family to set up an area in our garden {in the dark!} & equip it with some scary stuff & loads of candy so the kids could go do trick or treating. They had so much fun dressing up {and I had equally as much more fun designing invitations, the menu and decorating the table}.

Here’s the email invitation:

{digital elements from Weeds & Wildflowers design}

Here’s the menu…{just to clarify – we had hamburgers for dinner!}

{Can you see why I had more fun than the kids?} g

At the time I was so busy with the decorating, preparing the food and sorting out costumes for the kids that I didn’t take many photos of my decor. {And not good ones either!}.

My overly-dramatic and orange-obsessed pre-teen wacky-witch daughter (middle) with her cousin {who was dressed as a victim of some or other monster attack} and my daughter’s friend the other “wacky witch”:

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{Gotta luv that face!!}  d

 

My son and his best friends- taking the “vampire” thing a little far!:

 

 

 

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The table – I unfortunately took this pic after the kids had destroyed it a bit, but you can get an idea. The balloon topiaries were made by tying 5 balloons together with ribbon and placing them on top of a dowel stick pushed into a pot filled with sand. The pot was wrapped with purple cellophane and to finish it off, I hung curly ribbons down from the balloons. “Easy peasy” and great for recycling for the next party – simply add new balloons & ribbon and in need, change the colour of the cellophane.

 

These little jack-o-lanterns were a cute idea for candles – but unfortunately not too well thought through! {Note to self here!}    Flame + plastic = melted jack-o-lantern!! So I ended up with one candle becoming an orange blob which has now left a permanent stain on my sandstone counter top! {You live & learn!}

Eyeballs {plastic toys} floating in some punch…

The trick-or-treaters…

   And now for a freebie…

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I also made popcorn boxes decorated again with Weeds & Wildflowers’ cute digi Halloween elements.

I have a download for you of this popcorn box – so go ahead and grab it. Click on the picture to enlarge, right click and save.

• Print out 2 copies onto A4 cardstock and cut them out.
• Glue the two pieces together by gluing a side flap under one of the straight sides (matching the edges to get the box straight).
• Glue the bottom flaps overlapping each other and glue the other side flap to the inside of the box. Easy!(

If you have any problems, send me an email or leave a question in the comments here – as I’m not sure if the picture will be the correct size. {If you have problems, I’ll load it on 4-shared this afternoon}.

{If you like the cute dingbats I’ve used in this post – they are a free font called “KR Boo Lane” – not sure, but I probably downloaded it from www.dafont.com – I LOVE their free fonts!}

Have a great Tuesday!

{Yippee- I’m off to art class now…} G