Eclipse Party

*sigh* I wish these books had never been made. However, if it gets teens to read, I suppose I can't complain about them too loudly. We had a Twilight party last year in celebration of Edward's birthday (June 20th) - apparently I didn't write about it here. Brief overview of last year then: he had a birthday cake, werewolf kibble, drinks, played a matching quotes game, a trivia game, and a game of chance. We had a ton of prizes, and everyone walked away with something. Fast forward to this year. We had to come up with bigger and better things for this party.

First: We made buttons that said Team Edward and Team Jacob (with corresponding pics, of course), and the teens picked out of a hat and were sorted into the 2 teams.

They could only trade teams if there was someone else on the other team that wanted to trade.

Then: The first game we played was a Bella tug-of-war. (Get it? Because Jacob and Edward fight over her...) Played like a regular game of tug-of war, but we had Bella's pic taped to the middle of the rope. Whichever team pulled her across their line on the floor first won the game. The

winning team each received a New Moon door-hanger. (All of our stuff was New Moon themed b/c it was on clearance at Hot Topic).

Next: We had the teens do a word search. The first to find all of them the fastest won. The winner got to choose from our table of prizes.

Next: Trivia game! The teams had to pick one person to represent them (unfortunately, that person was the only one who could win a prize). The person was pretty much on their own except for they could use a lifeline and ask for help from their team.

Next: Eating contest! The teens competed against members of their own teams! Team Jacob had to eat Reese's Puff cereal out of dog food bowls and Team Edward had to eat cherry Jell-o out of plastic cups - all with their hands behind their backs! I felt a bit bad for Team Jacob - I should've either put less cereal in or at least given them some milk. Team Edward had a hard time, but once they figured out they could tip the cup over and slurp it off the table, that one ended in no time.

Finally: The chance game. This one is called Vampires and Victims, and basically all you have to do is make up a bunch of slips of paper with the words vampire and victim written on them. Count out an even # of each for the # of teens you have, and

then have them go in a circle each pulling out a slip of paper. Anyone who has a slip with "Vampire" moves on, anyone with "Victim" is out. Totally random. Keep going until you end up with only 1 vampire left, and there's your winner.

We still had prizes after all that, so we just started drawing names and giving out prizes until they were all gone. We didn't have enough for everyone to have a prize this time, but I think they all had a good time regardless.

Zombie Party

According to several sources, zombies are hot right now. Maybe not as much as vampires, but still - big. So I decided to do a zombie party as part of my month of Halloween festivities. I had done the gory makeup workshop earlier in the week, to give the kids an idea of some of the things they could do for the party. I advertised for weeks, and had a lot of teens interested (though unfortunately, I had to do it the same day as FBA, and consequently probably lost a few kids).

In the weeks leading up to the party, I made a Pin the Entrails on the Corpse game. It’s like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but instead of a tail, I had every body part imaginable – including internal organs. We started out with just a torso, and everyone was given a part to stick up. None of them were the same, and placement counted, so as the game went on and more parts were up, the harder and more confusing the game got.

We played Zombie Tag. You have everyone gather around and close their eyes. You tap 3 or so people (depending on the size of the group) to be “the infected”. Have everyone open their eyes and mill around a bit, and when you shout out the trigger word (whichever one you choose), the infected can start the attack. Zombies can only walk (well, shamble), and they only have to tag someone to infect them. The person tagged waits a moment, and then can begin their own attack. The game ends when only one person is left. Make sure you clear any tables and chairs out of the way before this starts, and make sure the kids don’t run.

We had a craft table, where the kids could make door hangers. Michael’s had foam letters made up of bones, and glow-in-the-dark skeletons you could assemble and stick. I just left them out on the table and let the kids wander up and do it when they had time. We had zombie trivia as well, though since most zombie movies are rated “R”, they had a tough time of it. Still, most had seen enough to answer the questions. My coworker Sybil also worked on breaking down the choreography to “Thriller”, and she taught us a small bit of the dance. When it was sped up to real time, it was almost impossible to keep up, but still fun.

For refreshments, we had chunks of sod (brownies with green frosting and worms on top), body part gummies, flayed flesh and pus cubes (cheese cubes and salami), and crunchy eyeballs (rice krispie treats formed into a ball, dunked in white chocolate, with an M&M on top).

To end the party, we had the kids take pictures with a few select books to make some of those READ posters. The full set of pictures is available here.