Ideas for Halloween Birthday Party?

For the first birthday,I don't think you want something too dark or scary. How about a harvest theme with fall leaves, scarecrows, and pumpkins. Maybe a few black cats?

Look at "hostess with the Mostess" blog. Great ideas there. I just saw a cute Halloween party called "black cat ball."

Ps - someone mentioned candy... How about a candy corn theme?

One word - Pinterest. They have tons of cute, cute, cute age-appropriate halloween ideas. for example, Witch hat cup cakes, ghost marshmallows, using white balloons draw a face with black marker and put a glow stick inside. instead of orange and black, use green and purple and black.

A good friend of mine has a daughter who was born on 31. She has had the cutest halloween themed parties every year. Not scary at all. She gets a lot of great ideas from the site listed above.

I agree, most Halloween stuff is scary to littles that is sold at the regular stores.

For cute decor (and inspiration) check out the teacher's supply stores and online. You could buy a bulletin board set for less than $10 that has a large assortment of cut-outs that are cute that could be used for decorations or used to decorate favors.

Then once you find something like that, it is easy to build on that.

I've also been a fan of cupcake designed "cakes" that go together to look like something. And then when it is time to serve the cake, it's already portioned and easy to serve. Put cupcakes together to form a pumpkin or jack o'lantern?

Have fun!

So he's a year old?

We do a Halloween party every year. I decorate the house with various Halloween things - spiderwebs, skeletons, lanterns, candy corn pumpkins.

The kids come in costumes. We do a scary pinata, hanging donuts, graham cracker haunted houses, etc.

For goody bags, I give them all good quality trick-or-treat bags (you can find this at party city for $0.25 on sale) with same candy and either glow necklaces or a mini flash light.

I've also seen kids have a party at the local pumpkin patch/corn maze. that seemed like a lot of fun and they got pumpkins at the end.

How fun. So glad momma & baby are doing well!

Most of the decorations will be for mom & guests but it can be so fun!

-mini plastic pumpkins to decorate the table
-hang a few bats just for decoration (not too scary)
-they have cute raven bird & black cat cut outs to decorate the windows
(they're made of cardboard)
-you can put dry ice in the bottom of a punch bowl. It looks like smoke
billowing out. Fun.
-A pumkin face cake. She can make it herself buying a mold to make it easy. Frost w/orange frosting (nothing fancy) making the mouth, eyes &
smile out of black licorace or bits of cut up flat Hershey chocolate
-she can still decorate the house w/orange & black streamers & balloons
-she can line her front walkway w/lanterns w/little white candle votives inside
-she can also decorate the front yard w/headstones & mini black fences (sold in the garden section of stores)
-for favors she can put some some candy & dress up things in those hand held pumpkins they use for trick or treating
-I'd probably skip the music so the kids don't get scared unless you do something fun like Monster Mash
-instead of a pumpkin cake she can make a rectangle cake, frost it black or dark brown & make mini headstones for a graveyard. Pretzel sticks or black licorace ropes can make fences
-you can also hand ghosts in the ceiling (you take a dum dum or Tootsie Roll Lollipop, cover w/a kleenex, put a rubberband around the head of the lollipop & draw 2 black dots for eyes on the head of the lollipop

Updated

How fun. So glad momma & baby are doing well!

Most of the decorations will be for mom & guests but it can be so fun!

-mini plastic pumpkins to decorate the table
-hang a few bats just for decoration (not too scary)
-they have cute raven bird & black cat cut outs to decorate the windows
(they're made of cardboard)
-you can put dry ice in the bottom of a punch bowl. It looks like smoke
billowing out. Fun.
-A pumkin face cake. She can make it herself buying a mold to make it easy. Frost w/orange frosting (nothing fancy) making the mouth, eyes &
smile out of black licorace or bits of cut up flat Hershey chocolate
-she can still decorate the house w/orange & black streamers & balloons
-she can line her front walkway w/lanterns w/little white candle votives inside
-she can also decorate the front yard w/headstones & mini black fences (sold in the garden section of stores)
-for favors she can put some some candy & dress up things in those hand held pumpkins they use for trick or treating
-I'd probably skip the music so the kids don't get scared unless you do something fun like Monster Mash
-instead of a pumpkin cake she can make a rectangle cake, frost it black or dark brown & make mini headstones for a graveyard. Pretzel sticks or black licorace ropes can make fences
-you can also hand ghosts in the ceiling (you take a dum dum or Tootsie Roll Lollipop, cover w/a kleenex, put a rubberband around the head of the lollipop & draw 2 black dots for eyes on the head of the lollipop

My eldest was born in late October, so we have done a couple things over the years. The first year, we had a cowboy themed party and the kids dressed up in cowboy costumes (a nod to Halloween, in that there were costumes, but we hadn't yet decided how or if our family was going to celebrate Halloween yet). We laid out haybales, all the kids got little vests and sheriff or deputy stars, little plastic pistols, and there were a lot of cowboy themed games for the older kids. Joseph, having just turned 1, was more involved in the pull string pinata, being passed around to friends and family (many, like my grandparents, uncle, sister, and older friends were meeting him for the first time). He had his own smash cake (came free with the sheet cake we bought from Walmart's bakery); the sheet cake was a pretty little western scene with horses and fences, a couple trees (which 5 years later, they STILL play with).

We did decide to go to a Halloween party 10 days later, so we did decide to do some mild Halloween stuff. At that party, it was all for little kids. There were big spiders with smiley faces, fun music like "Monster Mash" that we all danced to, lots of autumn decor AND candy apples, caramel apples, popcorn balls, candy corn stuff. Some little ones were dressed as pumpkins, or Dorothy, stuff like that. My son was JUST learning to walk and held his arms out straight in front of him and would lean forward, then his legs would be all stiff and he'd basically just stumble forward 5-7 steps at a time. We joked that he walked like a zombie. So I took some green and brown halloween makeup and basically just smudged his face up a little, put some gel in his hair and messed it all up so it was sticking out everywhere, smeared some make up "dirt" on one of my husband's old white undershirts and tore it up a little, and that with his little jeans was his "costume". He was really cute though. They played musical chairs, hot potato, simple little things. THEN we all went as a big group trick or treating (dont forget the wagon because they get tired of walking fast and parents may not want to carry all the way around the block).

We've had other seasonal parties where we went to a pumpkin patch and played in the bounce house (I went in with him because he was only 2 and I didn't want him getting hurt), we went on a hayride, watched the "big green tractors" do some work, did a pony ride, a corn field maze, picked out a pumpkin and took it home. I roasted the seeds, made a pumpkin soup, and we made a jack o lantern (with these cute little battery operated "flame" lights that flicker, but aren't real candles, so safer). We went to Michaels and got a little fake pumpkin and dated the bottom, and used a little decorating kit (black cat with purple jewels, pipecleaner whiskers, etc).....we started that on his 2nd Halloween and make one every year, date it, and put them all out. Instead of a birthday cake (because he didn't really care---didn't eat cake enough to know the difference), we made a delicious pumpkin roll (the ones that have cream cheese in them) and put 2 candles in that instead.

Another birthday: we planned a party to be the same day as a church's HUGE fall fest. We had pizza, some silly "gross" Halloween food/drink, "built" scarecrows with clothes the kids had outgrown, ate a big pumpkin decorated birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to him, then the kids got ready together in their little costumes (my son was easy: a dinosaur costume), we went to the big fall fest for games, pony rides, a little miniature choo choo train, bounce houses and slides, etc. We thought we were really getting away with something not having to pay and run all that stuff, but got to have much more than we would have had if we'd had a party at home, just attending the fest instead.

This past year was a Star Wars theme party where the kids got to dress up, play all kinds of games, had all kinds of themed drinks/foods to go with it all. But then while the kids were eating their pizza suddenly we heard the imperial march and Darth Vadar surprised us! The kids had to chase him around the backyard, beat him up with their foam sabers (that I made of pool noodles and papertowel tubes) and they turned him back to the good side. I'd rented a very good Darth Vadar costume (for husband to sneak off and put on) from a local costume shop and got a little discount for returning it a few days before Halloween.

We liked to mix "seasonal" with a little Halloween mixed in. I'm sure that Pinterest, as someone else mentioned would have all kinds of neat ideas. Also, look up "kids halloween birthday party" and I'm sure you'll find tons.

You can make a jack-o-lantern cake with a bunt pan. Bake the bunt cake and one cupcake, put the cupcake on top (upside down) to make the stem. Use green frosting for the stem and orange for the cake. Decorate with a jack-o-lantern face.

You could do bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving as activities. The carved pumpkins would double as party favours.

Here's the best I've got:
http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/pumpkin-shaped-chocola...

Anything else very "Halloween-y" is likely to be rather frightening to a 1 yr old, isn't it? Spiders? Witches? Monsters? Ghosts? I suppose she could use a candy-corn theme, though?

All of the magazines have Halloween themes in them, and many areas have temporary Halloween stores popping up all over. There's one every year in our town, setting up shop for 2 months in a vacant store. If your sister intends to decorate the house for Halloween every year, investing in a few things each year might be fun. So her purchases for this party won't be wasted. We use outdoor lights and fake tombstones with funny sayings and get pretty ridiculous. I'm sure many of those ideas could be used for a party.