When my child was born on October 31st, I was surprised when a few people referred to him as “a Halloween baby”. Growing up in Australia, Halloween was really not on my radar. It was just something you occasionally heard about in American tv shows, and I had thought it was held in August!? However, over the years since, Halloween has increased in popularity in Australia. But I hated all the creepy, junky masks and costumes in the discount stores. I really couldn’t see how this could be an appealing theme for a young boy’s birthday party. Fortunately my sister suggested this “Green Halloween” party theme. I relented and held a Halloween party for his 10th birthday. In fact, it was such a hit that we went with the same theme for his 11th birthday as well!

For this party I went with a colour theme of green, black and white. First I laid a black with white stars table runner along the dessert table. Then on the wall behind I hung green paper fans and black cardboard bats. I painted a bunch of twigs black and stuck them in a vase. I used black tissue paper to cover a glass rose bowl to look like a cauldron. Then I raided my Christmas decorations to fill the cauldron with green baubles. Finally, all of the plates, dishes and serviettes were a mix of greens, black and white in stripes, spots and block colours.

I also displayed the trick or treat bags. For the 10th birthday I attached black bats to green bags. These looked really effective but were pretty flimsy for actually holding any loot. So for the 11th birthday I used a sturdier brown paper bag with a handle and decorated it was a spider web image.

Witches Stew

The kids raced against each other to move pictures of spooky ingredients from one bowl to anther. The catch was they could not use their hands but had to suck up the pictures using drinking straws.

Green Slime Lucky Dip

I mixed up a big bowl of green jelly, then chopped it up and stuck small toys in it. The kids had to brave the slime to claim their reward! Just be sure to have wet wipes or a bucket of water handy for a easy clean up.

Mystery Touch

This game was a lot of fun. I had prepared different foods and placed them in tupperware containers. Then I covered the containers with a sheet. The kids took turns reaching under the sheet to feel all the yucky items. We had:

a. Goblin ears = dried apricots

b. Frogs Eyes = blueberries

c. Liver = tinned peach slices

d. Heart = peeled tomato

e. Worms = cooked spaghetti

f. Brains = steamed cauliflower

Wrap the Mummy

Our final game was hilarious. The kids worked in pairs with one wrapping the other up in toilet paper. The best looking Egyptian mummies won a chocolate.

The Birthday Cake

Since we held this Halloween party twice, I have two cakes to show. The first year I went with a monster eyes theme, and decorated the cake with pairs of eyes made from Oreo cookie eyes and brown m’n’ms.

The next year I made a spider surprise cake. The surprise comes from the fact that I hollowed out the centre of the cake and filled it with plastic spiders. Then when the cake was cut, the spiders tumbled out – creepy!

Both years I found it fun to choose the sweet treats – so many cute things to use. Firstly I put out a variety of green, white and brown chocolates and lollies.

These marshmallow ghosts were quick to put together with an edible cake decorators pen.

Next up were my mum’s delicious cupcakes which we decorated with mini marshmallow googly eyes and moustaches.

We stuck more little marshmallow eyes on these chocolate biscuits.

And since my son loves to bake he contributed these chocolate biscuit crumb spiders.

But I think my favourite of all the sweet treats would have to be these marshmallow pop monsters. How cute are they?

Green Halloween Party Favours

Last but not least were our take home party favours. Both times I went with marshmallow pops. For the 10th birthday party the kids each received one of these bat pops.

Then the following year we gave out these Egyptian mummy pops.