Easy Halloween Birthday Party Ideas. My Best Food, Decor, and Games Ideas for a Fun and Easy Kids Halloween Theme Birthday Party.
My daughter’s birthday is just 5 days after Halloween, which means I’m practically an expert in throwing a Halloween theme birthday party.
Over the years, we’ve had some awesome parties, with great treat bags, orange and black decorations and food, classic Halloween games, and more.
Because I have so much experience throwing a Halloween birthday party for kids, I thought I’d share some of my “greatest hits” to make sure your own Halloween party is filled with fun party ideas!
Below, you’ll find my best ideas for games, food, decor, and more! I hope you find it inspiring!
Halloween Birthday Party Games
We’ve experimented quite a bit over the years, but these are some of the best Halloween games we’ve played.
Donuts on a Thread
If you don’t know the Halloween Donuts on a Thread game, it’s got to be one of the easiest Halloween party games you can do!
We tied one donut per kid to a piece of long string, and hung the strings from a tree branch in our backyard. Vary the height of different donuts slightly to account for the players differences in height. It’s also a good idea to have a few extra donuts tied to strings, just in case there are any disasters before or during the game.
Each player picks a donut and puts their hands behind their back. On your signal, they start eating the dounut (with no help from their hands). The first player to finish their donut and shout “done” wins, but they have to be totally done with eating their donut.
My best tip for this game is to make sure you have water nearby. Also, choose appropriate donuts for the game – nothing with sprinkles or even powdered sugar, as that could be a choking hazard. Use plain old fashioned glazed donuts!
Body Parts and Mummy Relay Race
We also played a variation of the “egg on a spoon” relay race, except they have to carry body parts, not eggs, without dropping them (I found a pack of small plastic body parts that we used).
When they got to the end, they had to get mummy wrapped in toilet paper, and then race back to the starting line.
It was a gigantic mess, so a lot of fun for the kids!
Potato Sack Races
We also did potato sack races, and to make it a bit more “Halloween-ey” they had to tuck a mini pumpkin under their chin for the first part of the race.
Witches Cauldron Toss
I also had a big inflatable witches cauldron. I prepared “ghosts” by wrapping tennis balls in white fabric, and the kids had to stand at a line and toss the ghosts into the witch’s cauldron.
If you don’t have an inflatable witches’ cauldron, you could always use a large pot with a bit of creativity and decoration!
Halloween Pinatas
I found paper lanterns and thought I could use them as pinatas.
I bought about 4 and decorated 2 as pumpkins, one as Frankenstein, and one as a ghost.
While a good idea in theory, when I did this, it didn’t work out perfectly. The lanterns were cheap and when I filled them with candy, it was a bit more weight than they could support. My husband (brave soul!) had to get in there and try to hold them while the kids swung.
While it didn’t play out too well on my first try, I think you could easily adapt this idea. Next time, I’d probably make classic balloon and paper mache pinatas painted to look like pumpkins, monsters, and ghosts.
Flashlight Tag
As my kids got older, I also introduced Flashlight Tag into our Halloween parties. As a bonus, mini flashlights make for an easy and cheap addition to a Halloween party favor bag.
If you’ve never played flashlight tag before, it’s pretty easy – choose someone to be “it” and give them a flashlight. Whoever is it covers their eyes and counts while everyone else hides. When ready, the “it” person starts searching for others using their flashlight. Once found, they shine their flashlight on the person and call out their name, and that person is out of the game.
As a tip, it needs to be dark to play flashlight tag, but you can play it inside in a dark room too!
Yummy Halloween Party Food Ideas
The Halloween party food ideas below are from parties I’ve thrown over many years! I hope you get some great ideas!
Vampire Donuts
Vampire donuts are one of the easiest Halloween party treats you can make. Grab a box of glazed donuts and some glow in the dark fangs.
Place the fangs around the middle of the donut to make the vampires’ mouths. For the eyes, I used chocolate chips.
This treat is easy and cheap, and takes up a lot of table space. Plus, the kids can take the fangs home in their party favor bag.
Ghost Peeps Pudding Cups
For my ghost pudding cups, I bought chocolate pudding cups and ghost peeps. Then I just sprinkled crushed Oreos and candy corn on top. The kids loved these!
Ghost Cupcakes
These are so easy to make, and if you don’t have time to make cupcakes from scratch, you could buy plain cupcakes and decorate them with buttercream frosting. I piped on some black icing for the eyes and mouth, but you could also just use chocolate chips again to make it even easier!
Halloween Cookie Pie
This cookie pie is a fun alternative to a birthday cake, and super easy to make!
Frankenstein Pudding Cups
As an alternative to the ghost pudding, I’ve also made monster pudding cups, using food coloring and vanilla pudding and crushed oreos.
Spider Web 7-Layer Dip
For something more savory, I love this Halloween 7-layer Dip. It’s a normal 7 layer dip, but put together differently to give it a spooky spider web look.
Halloween Birthday Party Cake: A Haunted House Birthday Cake
This is one of my favorite birthday cakes I’ve made for my daughter.
Because it was a Halloween birthday party, I knew I wanted to make her a haunted house cake.
I threw it together using stuff I found in my pantry, and it was awesome!
Believe it or not, the house portion of my haunted house birthday cake is cake – it’s not a gingerbread house, as you might guess.
To make it, I made 6 square chocolate cakes. I leveled them, frosted them, and stacked them. Once they were stacked, I trimmed the top few layers to make a slightly sloped roof.
Then the fun part began – decorating!
The sides of the house have graham crackers sheets pressed up against them, and I covered the graham crackers in M&M’s.
The top of the roof is made with tootsie rolls with M&M’s on top.
The house’s eyes made made from marshmallows that I cut in half. The pupils, the tongue and the yellow door are all Laffy Taffy. I heat it in the microwave for about 10 seconds and then roll it out and cut with scissors to get the shape I want.
The tombstones are graham crackers that I cut and frosted.
The chimney is sugar wafers cut and then stacked with small dabs of frosting between to glue them.
I saved all of the cake tops after I leveled them and then crumbled them and spread it around for the dirt.
These are my favorite types of cakes to make and she loved it!
Easy Kids Halloween Party Decorations
When it comes to decorating for a kids Halloween party, get creative! Here are some of the ideas I’ve used over the years.
This spiderweb “tablecloth” is actually a doorway curtain I found, laid on top of a white tablecloth.
The skull bowl filled with cheese puffs gives a fun punch of Halloween orange.
And the novelty coffin adds a spooky touch, filled with candy corn.
In addition to the spider web table cloth, I had another spider web net that we hung over the doorway leading into the sunroom
I filled skeleton goblets with some fruit punch (for blood). These were a huge hit!
We also had orange lights draped everywhere that looked much cooler in the dark than they do in this picture!
Final Thoughts
I hope you like my ideas, and find a way to incorporate them in your own Halloween theme birthday party!
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