A Birthdoween Party

David and Bonnie pose with the Creepy Event Coordinator
and Nemo.

My friends Marla and Julie asked me what I wanted to do for my 48th birthday this year. I chose a Halloween party at the Bjorgan home. The guest list included Marla, Eric, Noella, Julie, Dave, Beatrice, Milo, Joaquim, and David.

During a lunch hour at work we brainstormed spooky activities to offer and creepy foods to serve. We divided up the Creepy Banquet tasks:

• cold spaghetti labelled "someone's brains"
• cranberry juice in a goblet labelled "old blood"
• peeled grapes in Rebecca's bowl that looks like blood is dripping down the jagged edges labeled "eye of newt"
• melted marshmallow with a few candy corn corn tossed in as undigested bits labelled "ghost poop"
• gummy candy shaped like dentures labeled "someone's teeth"
• raw almonds labelled "zombie teeth"
• pistachios labelled "witches finger nails" 

David's first independent pumpkin carving.

At the party, children took turns choosing events from the sticky note agenda that Marla had placed on her wall. 

David chose "pumpkin hunt" when it was his turn to select an event. Names had been were placed in small wicker pumpkins (decorations borrowed from Arta's storage), and hidden through out Marla's garden. David and Bea a were good sports about giving the younger children a chance to find some of the wicker baskets. Party-goers were allowed to trade in their paper with their name for some Halloween candy.

Marla artfully displays the work of the party goers. 
Can you find the spiderman symbol, the owl, and the bat flying by gothic windows?

There were pumpkins and tools for all who wanted to carve. I was reminded of my first pumpkin carving party I attended in 1995.A professor invited me over and said it is her perfect event for all her academic friends. They can sit, focus, and not have to try to make conversation with each other. That really made me laugh, and to be honest, I found it a very relaxing party.  I purchased carving kits when that season ended and they were on sale, then threw my own party like that year after year in Kansas and Illinois. In Florida I discovered that pumpkins have a much shorter carved shelf-life in the warm, snowless Fall.

Glow in the dark stick dance party. Photo by Eric Bjorg

After carving, we did some fishing. Marla had set up a spooky fishing pond. Objects that were pulled from the deep (the imaginary sea on the other side of the ship-shaped barbecue). They included mitten decorated with glow in the dark bones of the hand, a plastic arm with a bloody stump at one end, tongue tattoos, and jars of bubbles.

At the glow in the dark dance party event, I was reminded that you can never have enough glow sticks and they are a multiage crowd pleaser.

Marla told everyone to bring white sheets, one for each party-goer. At the end of the party we had a "ghost dance" outside to the music for the Adam's Family. I think it may have been the event during which we all laughed the most. We just walked around the yard bumping into each other. Since it was raining, it was good timing to be covered in a sheet.

Nice to have some comfort food after trying the creepy food banquet.

They party was so fun, no one wanted to leave after the designated two-hour period, so we ordered in pizza and hung out late into the night.

May your Halloween be filled with as much fun as this one has already been for me ... and tick-or-treating is still yet to come.