Halloween Spooktacular

My daughter may look like her Daddy, but she is her Mommy on the inside through and through and part of that is her love for friends, fun and parties! She loves drawing, designing and crafting so when she asked me if we could have an "all black" Halloween party, I was totally pumped. Like I need an excuse! LOL. We invited all of her best of friends from school + some of our best family + friends with kiddos she adores and her classmates and I think we ended up with a pretty good mix! Boys and girls - from age 3 to 10 and everyone stayed pretty entertained despite the rainy, dreary weather outside.

The balloon garland was my favorite decoration of the party. But let's be honest, most of the time it is. I started with this balloon kit from Amazon - I basically got it for the black and white tie-dye balloons. I then added black, white and orange from Dollar Tree and then came the spider webs. This stuff goes a LONG way. I bought 5 packs of the black and it decorated the entire living space of my house, including living room, dining room, hallway and kitchen!

** Every single balloon (except the small fillers) are double-stuffed. That's how the muted orange and matte gray colors were attained, by putting them inside a white. I absolutely love how it all tied together.

This was all your Spooky first sight as soon as you walked in the door! So fun, right?! The 3 ghosts came from the balloon kit I used to do the huge garland. The bats also came from Amazon. Just pay attention to the sizes. I had to order a couple times to get the right size. The first batch came in way to small - lesson learned. The witch hats came in a set of 8 and I hung them from the ceiling with small tacks. A black shiny fringe curtain hung right in front of the door so there was a little mystery created by not seeing what was behind.

We had little nooks and crannies set around the whole house to draw attention and add some detail. Just about everything here came from Target Dollar Spot, Dollar General or Dollar Tree!

There was a spooky little punch station with "Green Slime" and a bowl of gummy worms to drop inside. I made the punch with bottle of green Hawaiian punch, 2 cups of Sprite and a small can of pineapple juice. Super easy and the kids loved it!

Like I said, it was very drizzly and dreary outdoors so I needed to have activities inside to keep the kiddos entertained so we set up a craft table with every Halloween dollar store craft I could find. Those things go quick! I filled in with stickers, construction paper, Halloween coloring books and canvases for them to paint and take home. We also did cupcake decorating! All you need is some plain cupcakes (we did chocolate for the theme), black, white and orange icing (just add food coloring) and lots of sprinkles, cookie crumbles and candy. There was also a cute reading nook to practice spells with Mr. Skelly. He's a GOOD listener.

I made this batty chandelier to hang from the living room fan! All it was: wire wreath ring, skull garland, and fairy hair from Dollar Tree, then some of the leftover bats not used on the walls!

I designed this invitation for Iliana to send to her friends that went perfectly with the theme. You can find ones like this and more in my Etsy shop soon.

Overall, I think the kids had a spooktacular time and every single detail was a favorite and so worth the time. And yes, it will ALL stay up until Halloween!

What was your favorite part? Do you love celebrating Halloween too?