I sure hope this green stuff comes off

So it's officially Halloween and I survived another kids event. The good news is my face is no longer green and from what I could tell the kids at the party had a good time but I am sure if I am still the witch in residence come next Halloween, I will do one or two things differently.

I am not going to go into the minutiae of my day leading up to the party for two reasons. One it would be really boring but also I might accidentally give away some sort of trade secrets and get myself into lots of trouble. I will give you some idea of why I was almost a bald witch by the time the party got going.

So because of my weekend off falling on a bank holiday and then being very close to my holidays this weekend, I only ended working two days this week. Seeing as I am not back in work till Tuesday next week, I had a whole lot of work to do as well as all the party stuff. It made for a very stressful morning. I did get almost all of it done and then manage to go out and buy party sweets plus make far too many goodie bags and then fret endlessly about the party. I like to go between worrying that no kids will turn up and worrying that we will have too many kids and I wont have enough of everything. If worrying was in the Olympics, I would win something for sure.

The day flew by and before I knew it, I was running upstairs to change into my witches costume and wondering if I was going to regret painting my face green (in case it wouldn't all come off) I left on my name badge so people would know I worked in the shop and not just some nutter who dresses as a witch and hangs out in the kids section. When I came down the children's section was starting to fill up with princess, witches, super mario brothers and gorillas. So it seems my panic that no kids would turn up was for nothing. I could now resume worrying that I would have far too many kids and so I flitted about the crowd waiting to see how many more would arrive and one small child looked at me and called me a scary witch before running away so perhaps the green make up was a bit too much. 

I started off the party with a story. By this stage I had about 30 kids clustered around me and I haven't done an event for a few months so that must be why I felt a little jittery as I began to read a story to all of them. That and the fact that my boyfriend had brought his niece and nephew along and was keeping an eye on them while snickering about my green face. Anyway I had a nice crowd so no one stopped me to tell me that I accidentally skipped two pages of the story or got some words mixed up.

After that we played a game called trick or treat and if I had picked a better hat, I am sure it would have gone down very well. The kids had to pick a piece of paper out of the hat and it would either say trick (and they would have to do a trick ...make an animal noise or jump around, that kind of thing) or treat and they could choose a jelly or sticker. Most of the words got  stuck at the bottom of the hat so almost every child got a treat and most of them opted for a sticker but they seemed to really like it. 

After that I handed out Halloween pictures to colour. You'd be surprised by how excited kids get when given the chance to colour in at an event. I was glad I had gotten carried away with the photocopying and had taken the time to make little bunches of colours to hand out. I knew one of these days my tendency to be uber organized would pay off.

Post colouring we played a game in teams where you had to use loo roll to wrap each other up like mummies. Surprisingly easy and all you need is white toilet paper. Very messy but they seemed to really enjoy it and then one more game followed of pin the spider to the web, thank you internet for endless Halloween resources. It's like pin the tail on the donkey except its a print out of a web and you put sticky tape on the spider and try to put it on the web with a blindfold.

Once everyone had a go at that, it was time for one more story where I didn't miss a word. And I think at that stage the parents were ready to go home, the kids were ready to go home, hell even I was ready to go home so I gave them a goody bag ( a small toy and some sweets) and waved them off. I will admit my cleverest idea to date was to give goody bags come home time instead of loading them with sweets while the party is going on. I no longer have to unstick lolly pops from books and remove mashed marshmallows from the carpet and the kids are much happier leaving when they have a bag of treats, as David O'Doherty would say, who's the bloody wizard now. 

If you have ever wanted to know what the childrens section of a bookshop would look like after a storm then you should pop in just as a party has finished and you would get a pretty good idea. I abandoned the debris to go make myself less green and witchy and then restored some order to the place and by the time I got home, I was ready to go hide in a dark room for the night. I can only hope the kids enjoyed themselves and prepare myself for the next party which won't be for a while yet.