Halloween - San Jose,CA

You could also make a Dirt Cake, complete with gummy worms. Do a google search for dirt cake and hopefully you'll find an easy one! :)

Many grocery stores carry dry ice - buy a small amount of it to put in the punch bowl to make fog ooze out of it.

Have a fun party!

I was going to suggest the rubber glove ice as well. We did that and it is so fun.

Also, get some pumpkins and carve them (or not). then make fruit and cheese kabobs and stab them in the top of the pumpkins for crazy hair and a fun centerpiece and snacks.

Vampire cupcakes... here's a list of Halloween ideas on my blog including the cupcake tutorial, and some fun and easy treats:

http://littlelovables.blogspot.com/2009/10/sweet-treats-f...

decorating ideas:
http://littlelovables.blogspot.com/2009/10/treasures-in-f...

http://littlelovables.blogspot.com/2008/10/halloween-and-...

Kitty Litter Cake - make a regular cake, with regular icing. Crumble up your favorite cookies to make the "litter" and spread the crumbs all over the top of the cake - cover the icing completely. Partially melt tootsie-rolls for the "poopies" and distribute through the "litter" as you like. Use a slotted spatula as a "pooper scooper". if you can find a plastic container that looks like a litter box, it's even funnier. And it tastes REALLY good.

Well costume contest comes to mind. Renamed regular foods work wonders. Like Spaggetti and meatballs can be call eyeballs and brains, white cheddar puffs can be called skeleton bones. Adding green food coloring to the punch and calling witches brew or goblin ooze is great. The skeleton match up game is fun. You can make felt bones of a skeleton( about kid size) or buy one of those hanging skeletons- seperate the bones, give each kid a bone till they are all gone and have them one at a time place the bones on the wall with thumb tacks or putty tacks and watch them design weird creations. Kind of like pin the tale on the donkey but the is no rythme or reason. After one cycle is finished take a picture and then vote on the best one.
Sounds Spooktalcular, Good luck.

Bake brownies (use a square pan). Cut the edges off so that it is one big brownie that is shaped like a pumpkin. Use one of the cut off edges as the stem. Frost with orange frosting (use food coloring with vanilla canned frosting) and put candy corn around the edges. Leave out just a bit of the frosting (not made into orange) and use it to frost green frosting on the stem.

Check our www.food.com they have a great website with lots of wonderful recipes, even craft ideas that you could use.

I remeber a 7th grade halloween party that I went to (when I was in 7th graade!) and they had a menu for the meal/snack whereing everything sounded gross or scary. Fruit salad with eyeballs (peeled grapes), worms (spaghetti), etc.

Have fun!

My sister had a few Halloween birthday parties, and my favorite game was always guess whats in the jar. Get some jars or tupperware and darken the sides. Or any opaque container will work. Then inside put items like pealed grapes/witches eyeballs. Damp spaghetti with tomato sauce for brains. I can't remember the other items, but I'm sure you could find more ideas online. We would either put them on a table and have everyone go down the line putting their hands in the jars to guess what it was, or passed it around the table. Either way it gets lots of laughs and shivers. And don't forget to keep the lights low and play creepy music (you can buy good CD's at halloween stores, with doors slamming, chains rattling, etc.) to add to the effect.

My son went to a party where the ice in the punch were hands. They filled surgical gloves with colored water or punch and froze them then removed the ice from the gloves. It looked pretty cool.

onegame kids love... pin the hairy wart on the witch.. get a picture of a witch off the internet with a big nose... get a copy made real big... like 18 by 24 at a print place... then buy a cheap doll at the dollar store.. like a fake barbie.. cut her hair off... now make nickle size cardboard cut outs.(take a nickle and trace on an old box.. cut out .. ). glue some hair on them.. these are your hairy warts... the kids get one each.. blind fold.. and they try to stick the wart on the witches' nose... its fun... good luck.. apple dunking is a lot of fun... we do this every fall... the kids love it... big bucket, apples with dimes, nickles and pennies in it... cold water.... and the kids dunk for apples.. they usually put their whole head in.. so have some towels arournd..

All of the parenting magazines have ideas in the September and October issues - try the library if you don't want to purchase them all. 10 year olds usually like creepy slimy stuff. You can buy prizes and favors very cheaply from places like Oriental Trading - go online and/or order a catalog. Treasure hunts or scavenger hunts can be fun - it gets the kids outside, and they're plenty old enough to read clues and written directions. The stuff they find becomes their "goody bag" stuff. Sometimes that's better than 10 year old sitting around playing party games - depends on the group and what they are like.

A few simple food ideas: fill a large bowl with a combination of punch and cream soda add surbert then take a large rubber glove fill it with water and place it in the freezer until it is frozen solid cut the glove away from the ice block and place the frozen ice "hand" in the punch you could also make frozen faces by filling a mask with water and freezing it just remember to put a plastic wraqp in the make first before the water to stop the water from leaking out of the eye or nose holes: to make spider cupcakes make chocolate cupcakes with red icing use a jelly bean for the spider body and black licorice for the spider legs. you could also try googleing halloween reciepes.