Around here, we made a conscious decision to play host to a costume party for 16 kids, split between 5th and 7th graders. The party is scheduled for next Saturday evening (see the posts on Sunday morning for details) and should last a little over three hours.
My latest estimate of effort for a three hour party is pushing 70 hours. Yes, seventy. 7-0.
We have to decide on activities and plan those. There are decorations to purchase. Current inventory of decorations to sort through. Decorating itself (meaning the task, we have to do the decorating, of course.) Costume selection. Food preparation. And cleaning and organizing the main floor of the house.
Today is when my involvement in many of these tasks will take place. Being the largest member of the family, any teamster type work is mine. Any work involving a ladder, too. And electrical and janitorial tasks. The only thing that I will not do, in fact, that I am barred from doing, is making any sort of aesthetic decisions. Which decorations and where they are placed are decisions best left to others. My scare meter isn't calibrated for the pre-teen set. There is a chance that many of the kids would wind up in tears. So, I'm only an implementer, not a planner.
However, I am in charge of one thing. One of the activities will involve me setting at the end of our dining room table (which will be super long when we add the extensions.) There I will be giving Tarot readings. To make it interesting, when the parents RSVP, I am asking them for info about their son or daughter (and obtaining their permission to do a Tarot reading in the first place. Some folks don't even like to play with things like this or Runes or Ouija boards.)
I'm doing a simple three card past, present, future spread. The parents are feeding me interesting, mildly embarrassing facts about their child's past and present. They're also giving me an inkling of what the child would like for Christmas or an upcoming birthday for the future. To make this work, I'll have to be vague during the reading, interacting with the kid and ultimately "seeing" the fact. It should get a lot of giggles. I'm predicting (clairvoyance in action here) that they will be lining up to have their fortunes revealed, the little egomaniacs.
I need other party ideas. These are 10 to 13 year olds. All ideas are welcomed. Leave a comment or send an email. Thanks in advance.
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Saturday, October 20, 2007
Party preparation, the storm before the storm
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2 comments:
I remember attending a Halloween party where they put things in bowls and turned out the lights. We had to feel worms (spaghetti), eyeballs (peeled grapes), and so forth. It was fun along with whatever creepy story the parent was making up with the items.
That's a good idea. We did this as kids, too.
I've prepped it once before as an adult. I remember not liking peeling the grapes.
Supposedly, macaroni makes for a nice intestine feel and jello can be used as the liver.
Gross!!
I think we're going to do "Foul Flavors" where we take all the disgusting Bertie Bott's Beans flavors and slice them into tiny bits and separate them into lots. The kids take a tiny morsel and taste. They write down there guess on the flavor.
Should be disgusting fun.
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