I handmade the invitations by taking orange textured solid cards and stamping a mummy onto the front. There was a riddle on the front that read “Q. What kind of music do mummies like best?” and as you opened the invitation was the answer that said “A. Wrap music and the Monster Mash”. I set up a graveyard in the backyard with tombstones, mummies, and skeleton parts scattered around. I created a Monster Creation and named him Mr. Bones. I set him up in our garage on a table decorated with old ripped black fabric and stuffed an old flannel shirt and pants with newspaper to create his arms and legs. His body parts were inside his shirt, but his bones were all missing. I placed the body parts in plastic containers ex: eyeballs-gummy eyes, guts- cold cooked spaghetti, brains- cooked cauliflower, fingers- pieces of chalk or cut up carrots, teeth- unpopped popcorn, liver- canned peach half and then unbuttoned the flannel shirt and placed them all inside. This was later used as a gross game for the kids. We had an empty lot next to us that worked great for the Bone Treasure Hunt. I hid over 75 plastic skeleton heads, bones, and hands around on the small dirt piles and around the trees and bushes. I decorated the tables with glitter covered black fabric that had monsters, bats, and spiders on them. I served hamburgers and mummy dogs on skeleton platters. Spider cupcakes, candied apples, witches brew, assorted sugar cookies shaped as pumpkins, ghosts, and monsters were served along with lots of candy! As guests arrived they were handed their handmade mummy sacks that they later used to collect all their goodies. The first game we played was monster pop-up. Balloons with monster faces were thrown up in the air and the kids were to keep them off the ground by only using their heads to keep them up. If their monster balloon fell, then they were eliminated. The next game was called mummy hands. The kids’ hands were wrapped tightly in toilet paper and split up into 2 lines. There were tombstone boxes filled with candy at the front of the line. The object was to scoop up as much candy in their mummy hands and race down to the other end and place in the empty bowl without dropping the candy. All the kids gathered around for a spin to play pin the nose on the mummy. They played spider ring toss and Frankenstein bean bag toss. The kids were then led to the garage where they found Mr. Bones waiting for them. They each had to reach inside his shirt and feel all of his body parts. They were told that all of his bones were missing and were given little white plastic trash bags and I sent them out on a Bone Treasure Hunt. All the kids were running and having so much fun trying to find as many bones as they could. There were 2 prize bones which were the skeleton heads. I think the most fun was watching the boys against the girls play the old traditional game of “Tug of War”. The kids all danced to the Monster Mash and Ghost Busters songs and then loaded up for the fun hayride. On the hayride the kids were given glow sticks, necklaces and bracelets and looked at all the different lights and scary decorations in the neighborhood. The kids went home with their mummy bags filled with lots of prizes and candy.