Halloween OPORDER for Fun

Halloween OPORDER for Fun
© Tara Crooks

“Rats?” “Check.” “Bats?” “Check.” “Spiders?” Check. Do you know what that is? That’s the sound of my children curiously scavenging through their Halloween decorations boxes. This fall our neighborhood is buzzing. The great PCS (Permanent Change of Station) boom of 2010, as we like to call it, brought us bounties of new playmates and the hope of a spectacular Halloween. Halloween is a holiday deserving of a big bash but up until this point there weren’t enough people in our neighborhood to even try to make that happen. This year is different though, and preparations are already underway.

There are so many themes and types of Halloween parties to choose from I don’t know how we ever decided on anything. We want our Halloween party to be filled with Halloween treats for the kids mixed up with fun Halloween cocktails for the adults. Tons of scary jack-o-lanterns and mounds of sweet candy treats!

We began our planning meeting as all great organizers do, with food; a potluck dinner in our collective “front yard”. Being military, we all know about prior proper planning so we created what is now known as the Halloween party operations order (or HPOP for short). The HPOP identifies resources such as which families had the strobe light, spooky music, and fog machines, which is bringing the apples and the bucket for apple bobbing, and who had the grill.

This HPOP is no laughing matter either. After all, we are true professionals. We created stations for maximum Halloween impact, further detailing which family has to budget and execute each station. We have stations ranging from hot dog grilling and beverage dissemination to haunted basement, apple bobbing, and pumpkin painting. I’m sure it’s going to be nothing short of spooktacular!

This Halloween I encourage you to come out of your comfort zone and try to something bigger and better than turning off your porch light and pretending you don’t hear the doorbell. Halloween isn’t just for kids anymore, so don your best homemade costume and let loose for a few hours. Even though at times the thought of meeting new people can be scary and creepy you can turn the holiday into something fun by creating an amazing opportunity to build camaraderie amongst your neighbors and others in your military family.

Here are some great resources to get you started:

For great craft ideas for a children’s party visit Amazing Moms.

For Halloween party ideas for adults and kids visit HalloweenPartyIdeas.org.

For an amazing party planning checklist that you can adapt to any party visit Party411.

Check out these awesome homemade costume ideas (with pictures) at CoolestHomemadeCostumes.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts