Halloween is a perfect holiday for the young and young at heart – but sometimes, it can be challenging for kids who scare easily. While you may want to break out your most ghoulish and gruesome costumes and decor, this can often leave more sensitive youngsters feeling frightened. To create an event that is fun and not so scary so as to upset young children, here are a few party ideas:

Make Photo Memories with a Backdrop
One great idea is to create spooky, but non-threatening Halloween backdrops that kids can have their pictures taken in front of. By giving them the chance to have their picture taken, they can look back fondly and without fear, on all their holiday memories! One fun pre-party activity could be to have your kids design the backdrop themselves with less-than-scary monsters of their own creation!

SignArtEtc has a variety of banners and backdrops that can be custom-designed with your Halloween graphics. Our team of professional designers will do the layout at no extra cost – just send us your images and we’ll do the rest! Visit our online store to learn more.

Decorate with seasonal flair
Rather than going with party decor that involves spider webs, blood or other violent or frightening images, try playing up more seasonal aspects of the holiday. Scatter dried red, yellow and orange leaves around the party area and feature pumpkins, apples and hay. Balloons in Halloween colors of orange, red or black are also a great addition, as with more abstract decorations like witch hats, black cat cutouts and tissue-paper ghosts.

If you do want to evoke slightly scary, monster-themed imagery, opt for more cartoonish depictions where the monsters are smiling and friendly, making them more cuddly than terrifying.

Avoid ‘scary’ costumes and party games
When throwing a party with kids in mind, it’s OK to ask guests to avoid coming dressed in gory or fearsome costumes. Choosing a theme for your party can help attendees come up with less frightening alternatives to a scary costume. Instead of ghouls or monsters, why not have your guests come in antiquated garb or dressed as historical figures? For kids’ costumes, princesses, princes, superheroes and other popular culture figures can be an excellent alternative. At the end of the night, you can hold a costume contest and announce winners for various categories.

While party games like reaching into a bowl of peeled grapes may have been staples of a different era of childhood, there are plenty of other fun activities that don’t rely on scares. Here are a few alternatives:

• Beanbag toss or cornhole
• Pin the tail (or nose) on the pumpkin
• Bobbing for apples
• “Witch pitch” – a game where players try and throw candy corn into mini plastic witch cauldrons
• Getting a Halloween-themed piñata

Pumpkin carving is a fun, not-so-scary Halloween party activity.

Halloween crafts
Keeping kids occupied at a party is crucial, and arts and crafts are a great way to get them focused and having fun. A few Halloween-themed crafts that you can feature at your next party include:

• Supervised pumpkin carving – or painting for younger kids
• Making apple stamps
• Putting together “fall wreaths” with dried sticks and leaves
• Folding and cutting colored paper to create spider webs

Not-so-scary treats
While packaged candy is the traditional Halloween party favor, there are ways you can spice things up with handmade treats or healthier alternatives. Instead of handing out candy, why not offer:

• Roasted pumpkin seeds
• Sliced apples and strawberries to dip in caramel or chocolate sauce
• Fruit skewers decorated to look like goofy bugs or aliens
• Prepare your favorite fruit punch, but add green food coloring and a touch of dried ice to turn it into a witches brew
• Put together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using a bagel as bread, then stick on googly eyes and plastic vampire fangs in the bagel hole

Another fun, interactive treat for kids is having them assemble bagel or English muffin pizzas. Provide the pre-cut bagels or English muffins as well as chopped veggies, pepperoni, shredded cheese or other toppings and encourage the kids to make monster faces. Bake the pizzas and let the children eat the monster face they designed. How could that be scary?

For all of your holiday party sign and backdrop needs, contact Sign Art Etc. It would be a pleasure to hear from you.

Your little girl is all grown up, and now it’s time to plan her Sweet 16 party. If she and her friends are all about glitz and Hollywood glamour, a red carpet theme might be just the ticket!

Narrow down the theme
Your daughter (like most teenagers) probably has very definite likes and dislikes. You can make the theme more specific to her interests, such as a favorite movie, TV show, musical act or even a book or favorite decade.

Atmosphere is everything
To give any Sweet 16 that red carpet atmosphere, use a personalized, professional background for selfies and group shots. This will give your daughter and her friends the opportunity to create tangible memories that reflect the day. You can choose from a number of pre-made templates, or the Sign Art team can help you create an original, custom banner. Our backdrops are also available in packages that include a red carpet runner for the full effect.

Set a dress code
Guests (and party helpers) should all be dressed to the nines to reinforce the theme. Make sure to include this in the invitation.

Invite the “Paparazzi”
Whether you hire professional photographers or just ask a few friends for a favor, have them ready to flash the bulbs down the red carpet as guests arrive.

Now for the practical stuff…

Stick to a budget
Whatever event you’re planning, whether it’s a Sweet 16, a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah, little details add up and it’s easy to let costs get out of hand if you don’t have a plan beforehand.

Pick a date
Although you should hold the party around your daughter’s birthday, it doesn’t need to fall on the exact day. Choose a day that doesn’t coincide with a holiday.

Bring adult supervision
Even though they’re not little kids any more, 16-year-olds are still minors. Include chaperones who will help you make sure everyone’s having a fun and safe time.

Event planning can be a hectic and sometimes frenetically paced profession. It’s the nature of the business. After all, successful planners function as the strong, guiding hand that keeps every aspect of a given event running smoothly: from catering and seating arrangements to musical accompaniments and custom step and repeat backdrops.

Also, on some level, the challenges posed are invigorating to the most skillful practitioners of this trade. But at some point, a real surplus of stress is all but guaranteed to cause some serious problems for a planner on both a personal and professional level.

With this in mind, it’s well worth event planners’ time to consider steps they can take to limit the intrusion of stress into their daily routines during wedding season or any other busy time of the year for their business. Today, let’s take a look at a few essential tips and strategies:

Make detailed plans in advance 
Predicting the precise outcome of future events is often a recipe for disappointment, mostly because it’s rarely possible. There will be some spontaneous happenings that throw you for a loop almost no matter what. However, you can minimize the likelihood of the unexpected by a considerable margin if you start planning the event as far in advance as possible, according to Eventbrite.

This extends to multiple aspects of the process: budgeting, choosing the venue and contracts with third-party vendors. Regarding the latter, it’s also important at this stage to ensure all contracts are fully detailed so future disputes don’t arise.

Simplify the menu 
There’s a balancing act involved here, because you must accommodate tastes and dietary restrictions with your food offerings and can’t be too narrow. Nevertheless, Evite recommends keeping the menu fairly simple, using one or two adventurous choices and a few old standbys for the rest.

Apply a similar philosophy to the beverage selection, using the essentials – beer, wine, soft drinks, water, coffee – and maybe a craft cocktail or two. A quality caterer will help you figure all of this out in no time.

Finish setup early 
Circling back to the matter of unpredictability, don’t forget that problems can surface just before an event’s scheduled start time. This possibility behooves planners to finish all setup tasks several hours before the party begins, according to Advantage.

Doing so affords you the opportunity to keep an eye out for last-minute crises and also project a cool, calm and collected exterior, so that your clients feel their faith in your abilities has been rewarded.

Don’t forget about self-care 
It’s easy to become extremely wrapped up in all of the ins and outs of planning a wedding, corporate holiday party, charitable banquet or any other large-scale event. This sometimes can’t be avoided, but it doesn’t have to be a massive source of stress that impugns your physical and mental health.

Event Manager Blog suggests sticking to a healthy diet, finding time for exercise, getting plenty of sleep and implementing other basic but essential self-care strategies to mitigate the possibility of becoming burned out by the rigors of putting an event together.