Easy & Inexpensive Ideas for Hosting a Family Friendly Halloween Party!

If you’re throwing a Halloween party, we’ve got and found a few quick and easy suggestions. Check them out below!

INVITATIONS

For parties, get your guests in the mood with Halloween themed invites. If you’re sending email invitations, there are tons of themed ones out there. Pick one out that calls to you.

If you’re handing out physical invites, try printing them out with a few jack-o-lanterns or other seasonal images and/or throw some Halloween confetti in there.

DECORATIONS

There are lots of quick and easy things you can do to add some Halloween ambiance to your party area. Use some black or orange tablecloths to decorate tables, scatter some Dollar-store spiders around, spread out some stretchable white web. You may even be able to find some Halloween colored flowers at your local store.

If you’re pumpkin decorating, lay them out in a corner and weave some floral vine (you can find them at the Dollar Tree or Michaels) to make it look more like a pumpkin patch.

RENT A COSTUME STATION

Most guests will trickle in a few minutes before or after the actual start time of the party. To keep everyone in them, have an area of the party that’s fully decorated or a wall with a background scene and let the guests snap some memories!

If you’ve got some extra costumes or even some hats and masks lying around, place them on a table and call it “Rent a costume” for those who didn’t get the “come in costume” memo 😉 You may find they’ll get more in the spirit once they’re at the actual party.

FOOD AND DRINKS

Food crafts are a fun way to add in some festiveness when throwing a party where you’ve just ordered some pizza 🙂 You can have them set up beforehand or let guests join in on the creative fun!

On the healthier side:
- Jack-o-lantern cuties. Take a cutie and draw a jack-o-lantern face on it. OR go the extra mile (really just a foot or two), peel the cutie, and add a bit of green shaped as a stem on top (green peppers, celery, broccoli stem, etc). Fun and healthy too!
- Silly Apple Bites by Fork & Beans has a cute and healthy snack that our younger guests enjoyed making and eating! We substituted the sunflower seeds for almond slices and used store-bought, edible googly eyes from the baking section of the grocery store (THESE ARE AMAZING!) and everyone was happy.
For those with sweeter teeth:
- Jack-o-lantern Fruit Cups. All you need are store-bought fruit cups (orange ones work best) and a sharpie. Draw on a jack-o-lantern face on a few cups and you’ve got an almost instant, edible decoration to Halloween table.
- Easy spider donuts by Mom Loves Baking. This one was quick and easy too! Our little ones decided to use the edible googly eyes and just added them onto a spider-web themed paper plate. Simple and done!

CRAFTS

These crafts are both simple to prepare and simple (or extravagant depending on the imagination of your guests) to do.

Sticker scenes. You can find quite a few Halloween Sticker Scenes packets on Oriental Trading that are ready made with a background scene and stickers to match. OR you can head out to any store and pick up some Halloween themed stickers and have the kids decorate a regular piece of paper.
Halloween Crafts. There are quite a few easy to put together crafts that have made their way into our Halloween parties.
Balloon ghosts. This one is super simple – all you need are white balloons (you can get a small packet from the Dollar store or larger ones from any party store) and some black markers. Have your guests blow up a balloon and draw a ghost on them. If you’ve got the budget, pick up some helium balloons so they can float up high.
Pumpkin Decorating. If you’re brave, you can go the carving route AND get some pumpkin seeds to roast as a bonus! BUT, if you’re wary of mopping up pumpkin insides, there’s a simpler alternative – pumpkin push-ins or stickers. You can find these at most grocery stores or online (Spider Push-in Kit). These are a great alternative because you can just pushin some decorative pins or stick some stickers on (you may need some glue dots to provide some extra stickiness to some of the sticker ones). And the middle ground would be to let them paint the pumpkins too.

GAMES

Like the crafts, there are tons of easy games that you can set up for your party. Most of these only require a little bit of prep work and/or a trip to the store (or online delivery ;))

Guess the # of items in the jar. Have a few different size jars or a few items of different sizes. The person with the number closest to the actual gets to keep the jar! Around Halloween, you can find tons of cost-effective items or more expensive prizes depending on your budget. A few examples: spiders, erasers, pencils from the Dollar Tree; bulk assortments from Oriental Trading, or candy from anywhere!
Lung power. Have a few straws – hygienically one or two for each guest 🙂 – and a few printed out Halloween images. Have the guests use a straw to pull up the image and carry it over to the other end of the room.
Halloween bingo. Who doesn’t love Bingo – especially if you use small candy (like Hershey kisses) as the chips AND larger candy as the prizes.

GOODIE BAGS

If you want to keep in theme when you’re guests leave, sprinkle in some [] items for their goodie bag along with any of the regular candy or hand outs you want to give out.

Glowsticks, Glow Bracelets, Glow necklaces. If your party is a few days before Halloween, glow sticks – or any variation – are a goodie bag treat with foresight. Depending on where you and your guests live and your schedule, you may be trick or treating in the dark. Glow Sticks are both fun for kiddos and allow for extra warning that there’s a little trick or treater walking around.
Pinwheels. Remember the joy of a pinwheel – blowing them to make them move or just watching them in the wind? Let your little ones discover or your older guests rediscover that simple bit of fun 🙂 These Pinwheels are super cute and come all set up 🙂
Rubber Duckies. Simple Halloween Rubber Duckies are another quick and easy add-in to your goodie bag (or even as an alternative to passing out candy if you’re in a neighborhood filled with babies). You can find some Halloween themed ones all around – we’ve handed out the ones at Oriental Trading and those have worked quite well.

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you so much for checking out our party planning article. Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next celebration!

If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. Also, If you haven’t already and are still looking for that perfect party theme, feel free to check out some of our other Party Guides or Halloween Ideas!

Happy Party Planning & Happy Halloween! 🙂