Crackers on the Couch: A Monster Post about a Monster Party...

Ever feel like you're being watched?

Lots of eyeballs big and small kept tabs on the kids at our most recent Halloween party! In keeping with my desire to do non-traditional Halloween parties, this year I wanted to do a Monster party. Pinterest has just got gobs of so many cute monster party ideas that I couldn't stand it. Many of the things you will see were inspired by pins on my board, like this eyeball monster by Dave Lowe though much of it is also straight out of my squishy gray matter. For example:

As soon as I saw these vibrant gerbera daisies, I knew I wanted some flowers and I knew I wanted eyeballs in those flowers. A couple of 6 packs of ping pong balls and a Sharpie high later, I had an assortment of cute cartoonish eyeballs. I bought the fern and the flowers and managed to stick the ping-pong eyes on with mounting tape. All it took for the fern was tape, and for the flowers, I stuck a flat-head pin through a piece of tape, taped it to the ball, and stabbed the sharp end of the pin into the disk of the flower. Worked like a charm!

I also wanted there to be a lot of texture and color, so I bought a bunch of brightly colored boas and used them as I would streamers as well as general fluffy beauty.

There are several similar wreaths on Pinterest. I made this one with two 6 foot boas and 6 ping pong eyes. I just hot glued the eyes on.

I grouped all the eyes in one spot so it would look more like a creature than a decoration.

My friend Tori made this beautiful banner and I hung it on the table because it looked a little like teeth!

She also made pumpkins with candles and those super cute candy corn pots filled with candy corn and zombie finger puppets! When I saw those napkins on Zulily I had to have them because they looked so much like monster hair! But they were so cute, nobody used them, they thought they were decorations!

Of course, once all the decorations are set up and the candles lit, it's time to let the kids in, right?

This is my youngest. He is the King of all Monsters. He is part monster, part zombie, part ghost, part vampire, part alien, with a tentacle arm. 'Cuz hellz yeah.

Grim Reaperess here made her own scythe. Admirable!

Homemade Sgt. Calhoun from Wreck It Ralph. Her costume lights up!

Dr. Doofenschmertz and a bearded monk.

My other son. A robot with a door that opens to see his innards. Two boxes, some aluminum foil, and a trip to Ace Hardware. Booya!

My cat. The only one of my dependents who has not be vociferously demanding a costume for the last 363 days. Clearly amused.

And here we have a rag-tag group of "Momsters." Tutu tutorials are rampant on the web so I whipped up a few for these ladies, I found the leggings at Value Village and the teal and orange monster hats are something I banged together; more on those later. The overall idea for the costume came from the blog Seven Thirty Three. It says a lot that these ladies are willing to dress like this and tromp around in the woods with me after dark without being paid or plied with booze.

We shoved a little food in our pie holes after everyone arrived. My contribution was:

Eyeball Soup. The idea came from Martha Stewart, but I used my own recipe.

Tomato Soup

1 tsp Olive oil

2 medium onion, cleaned and sliced

2 medium sized carrot, sliced

4 small cloves garlic, pressed

4 quarts of tomatoes

6 leaves of basil, finely chopped

Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a pan and saute the onion until soft. Add the carrot and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook for about 30 seconds to allow the flavor to bloom, then deglaze the pan (use any fluid you like, I used vodka). Add tomatoes and cook until carrots are soft. Blend the soup with a blender or immersion blender until smooth. Salt and pepper. Add basil just before serving.

These eyeballs are tiny bocconcini cheeses and olives. I cut a small conical opening in the cheese with a paring knife and sliced the tips off some black olives. Just squish 'em in! I kept the eyeballs in a separate bowl since I put the soup in a crock pot to keep it warm and I didn't want the cheese to melt. They kept great overnight in the fridge in an airtight container.

I also made my quick and easy homemade orange soda.

We asked our guests to bring food too, which really cut down the food prep work this year!

After food it was game time, of course!

The kids threw eyeballs into monster boxes my gal Danika made. It's amazing how much they love having a chance to display their throwing and aiming skills. They are based on these adorable tattle monsters from Giggles Galore.

They also played a game called "Who's got the Monster Paw?" I modified the basic premise of "Who's got the Button?" To make the paw, I cut the fingers out of an old glove, sewed some yarn on it, and each kid got a turn to wear it (he's actually got it on backward in this picture). To play, one child is chosen as guesser and sent out of the room, another child is chosen to have the paw and puts it on, all the kids sit on their hands so that the paw is hidden and the guesser returns and guesses who has the paw. As soon as the paw is discovered, the wearer becomes the guesser and leaves the room. Play continues until everyone has had a chance to wear the paw and guess. We played a trick on the last player and gave the paw to a grown up. The kids loved it!

After all the stalling till it got dark, it was finally time to take them into the woods. I sprayed each kid with some "Monster Protection Spray" (water), gave them each a flashlight, and lead the way to the forest. I informed them that they were also going to need a disguise to keep the monsters from noticing them, too. The first thing they got was a hat and a set of fangs.

Later, they got some tails. Then they got to touch some actual monsters!

These were eyeball monsters from the planet EyeGore. I got the idea for these from the Fun At Home with Kid's blog. I loved how her eyeballs caught the light and new I needed these things to glow in the dark. I found six touch lights at a second hand store and knew they'd be perfect for the woods. I had actually hoped this light would fit into the bottom of the fish bowl, but it was a little too big. It worked out OK just to hold it underneath, though. As for the rest of the lights:

Box monsters! We had been racking our brains to figure out how to make monsters in the woods. About a week before the party, we received some new stools in the mail, and the boxes were perfect! I painted pupils on some lights with some patio paint and used mounting tape to affix them to the boxes. Lauren helped me give this beauty her swagger.

This guy, who I promised the kids probably wouldn't eat them, was three boxes taped together, supported on either side with a couple of logs, and covered with leaves. I used a piece of string to keep the eye flap open.

Their next adventure was a trek through the eyeball forest. I got two different size white beach balls from Oriental Trading Company and painted the end opposite the inflation spout, which already conveniently has that round patch.

Even the roots had eyes thanks to Danika and Matt!

The final pieces of their disguise were some eyes and antennae. Then I dropped the bomb on them! Instead of "Monster Protection Spray," I had actually used "Turn to Monster Spray!!" They were going to be stuck like this for the rest of the night! In order to release them back into the wild, they were going to have to be cataloged.