Girls Night Out

This year in Relief Society we started what we call Girls Night Out. Each month there is a different host that chooses where and what we will do. The purpose for this is to learn new skills, learn what other people are interested in, to have a night away from life and mostly just get to know one another better. I chose to host October because I love Halloween and I knew it would be a good excuse to get into it. I put out flyer's a couple weeks ago that advertised, "Bingo Night, with a Halloween Twist" People started showing up at 7:00 last night and this is what they saw on the door. (The other side says, "Sorry Out of Candy")

When you walk into the house we have a couple rooms and then there is this entryway into the rest of the house. I decided to put a bat attack there as people walked in.
Then there was this little witch on the wall.

Hanging by our back door is Mr Jack. He's supposed to be just a Pumpkin Man but I have nicknamed him Jack. And this is Chris Papworth our new Relief Society President.

I told everyone I wasn't really taking pictures of them, I was getting the decorations on the walls. So these are the pumpkins that Michael and Vivian glued the faces onto.

These are some of the paintings that we did. They are supposed to be ghosts. They look pretty scary to me.

Here are some more Paint blobs and the balloons that Regina, Tammy and Rachel put up for me.

More Paint blobs. The two bats came out pretty good. Everyone is engrossed in the word search puzzle I made. 80 words are in it. I know I am crazy, but everyone enjoyed working on it.

Here is a close up of my table decorations. The tree is made out of a paper grocery bag and the little figures are just out of salt dough that we put in the microwave to get hard.

As you can see, I had the kids help with this one. It's amazing how messy they can get.

Here is my lovely snacks I had available. Cantaloupe and grapes, candied orange slices, homemade pumpkin bread, witch's fingers (out of string cheese), monster toes (out of lil smokies and strips of tortilla), and Halloween snack mix (including, homemade Carmel corn, raisins, cashews and candy corn).

And here is my candy buffet. Butterscotch, Carmel squares, pumpkin shaped candy corn, and chocolate with eyeballs and monster wrappers. I bought a ton of Apple cider for the night but wasn't sure how to serve it so it just sat there looking cool. I did have Tang and water though.Here are some of the games we played. We did a word unscramble, a Halloween Trivia that was 20 questions long. And then the word search that I made. I also had little cut outs of ghosts that they could take home and make with their kids or grand kids.

I had this jar of tootsie rolls for people to guess how many were in it, but everyone forgot so I ended up writing every ones names on the little slips and I just drew randomly for who won it. I also had door prizes that I gave away using the same method. (I didn't realize the pun last night, but the prizes really were for the door.) I had made 3 extra of the Trick or Treat/Sorry Out of Candy sign.

Here is the Bingo Game we played. My mom actually created it years ago and I got the master copies from her and copied them to orange paper, then glued them to the red cardstock and laminated them. We used candy corn for the markers and everyone enjoyed it. The game to the right is a memory game I made for the kids.

They also got to pick up a couple treats on their way out. I made chocolate covered pretzels. Chocolate covered large pretzel sticks with sprinkles. Chocolate covered marshmellows with coconut shavings. And chocolate covered marshmellows with sprinkles. There are a few white chocolate things in there too.

Also for fun I decided to dig this out of the game closet. This is something I made in 8th grade (I think). It is a full board game that I got 50 out of 50 on. I did a pretty good job back in the day. John, Regina and I played it the other night and it was fun. Each player has a list of items they have to go around the board and collect for the Halloween party. The first player to collect all their items and return back home wins.

After the party I decided to put up my display of salt dough figures on the entryway table. There we can enjoy it until Halloween.

All in all, it was a super fun evening. We had a pretty good turn out with new people coming so it was super fun. I was glad I got most of my decorations up and if you want to do any of the crafts most of them are from familyfun.com. Also it felt so good to go to bed with a clean house (except dishes, which Tammy is awesomely working on as I type).

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone.