The Road to Turning Four!

My son's 4th birthday was Sunday, October 20th. He was so excited to be turning four (he's the last of his class to have a birthday so he's been patiently waiting) that its been a big topic of conversation around the house for the past few weeks. 

In that time, he has been very clear to me that he wanted a Halloween party and that he wanted to be Batman -looks pretty good don't you think?






Fast forward about 2 weeks later and we were slammed as usual at work and I had no time to plan a thing. What I did have however was a recent blog post I had done for People.com Celebrity Moms & Babies Blog about throwing a kids themed Halloween Party. Duh!!! 

I had everything I needed in my own article round up-why was I racking my brain? So I set out in a span of 3 days (not including our visit to the pumpkin patch below) collecting things at work and putting together what turned out to be an awesome (not my words) Halloween themed birthday party. Check it out how we brought the story to life:

The Sunday prior to his party my friends Cassandre (@LosingInTheCity) and Deborah invited the kids and I on an impromptu trip to pick pumpkins. It was a lazy Sunday and we weren't doing much so why not?We headed about an hour or so outside of NYC to Fink's Farm located in Wading River, NY.This actually wasn't our original destination but when we passed Fink's on the way and saw their awesome offerings, we just had to stop. For $13 (some things are additional once inside) we got access to pony rides, the petting zoo, hay rides, pumpkin toss, a live band, of course the pumpkin patch and so much more. It was on that drive that I got the idea to have a Pumpkin Art Station at my son's party (see below). We bought about 12 small pumpkins that day.

Then came the actual event. We had it a park near his school (say it with me 'no rental fee') and I decided to focus a few of the ideas from my People.com story. The Mummy Juice Boxes (note: I thought this duct tape activity would be easy, which it was but it took a really long time-18 boxes = about 3 hrs). The pumpkin art station was a great no-carve way to have fun since the children were so young. I bought a can of white spray paint (about $6.50), my daughter and I took the 12 pumpkins to our backyard and laid them on a drop cloth out back and spray painted them on Saturday night so they would be dry on Sunday (note: I suggest you find a box to transport them in so they don't get nicked if you are moving them). 

I (with the help of my mother-in-law and daughter) also did a treat bag (brown lunch bag, Halloween stamp, and a name tag- I used chalkboard tags and wrote each of the kids name in chalk) similar to the one pictured here from the story which came out really nice but alas I forgot to take a picture of my own (boo!):

Two other ideas when over really well: (and are super easy)

Graveyard Cupcakes which you see above are really just chocolate mini cupcakes with Oreo cookie crumbles and green candy hand jammed inside which I got at Target. 

DIY mini S'mores kits (also pictured above) included a snack sized plastic bag with one full graham cracker broken in half, one mini Hershey bar, and 4 seasonal ghost marshmallows. I sealed it with a downloaded S'mores topper from Lauren Haddox Designs. This idea was donated by my friend and new blogger Bridget from Cooking with Sass (you can find her on Facebook) who saved me from my live S'mores cooking demo I'd planned on doing at the park. So many parents thanked me at dropped off this morning for the goodie bag.

And lastly, here are a few pics of the kids in costume and in action from the party.

           

 Fun times indeed. In case you are wondering, we were all super pooped this morning.