El Fiesta Del Dia De Los Muertos!

Every year, we have a big Halloween party for our kids. The basics are always the same- awesome kids and their families are invited, we play some silly games, we eat a big potluck, the kids run around and play like crazy and the adults stand around and visit like crazy. This year, our theme was Dia De Los Muertos- The Day of the Dead.
Really Dia De Los Muertos is not the Mexican version of Halloween; It's more All Soul's Day with a kick, and is not considered to be scary at all. Perfect for us, cause we have tried to keep the scare factor pretty low till the kids are older.

Miss Mae and I spent a lot of time crafting to prepare for the party. We made cheaters "papel picado" by folding and cutting sheets of construction paper and then taping them to curling ribbon to hang from the ceiling and across the yard. It is such a bright and cheerful decoration! We also made a ton of tissue paper flowers for decorations and a lot of orange tissue paper marigolds to decorate the "cemetery" with.
I was able to use a lot of dollar store Halloween skull items, which I decorated to make them brightly colored calaveras, using colored permanent markers.

I also used inexpensive white poster board to make large calveras (skulls) to hang around the house and yard for decoration.

Mr. Sahm emptied out the unused playhouse and transformed it into the adults-only beverage area, Dead Man's Cantina, where cervesa and margaritas were served.

I started out our activities by reading a little book about the Day of the Dead, and then we played "pass the calavera"...

...and the kids made their own calvera masks with paper plates. We also put together a plastic skeleton and had a failed attempt at pin the skull on the skeleton. They are too old and smart for that. Every one figured out how to peek and got the skull right on the mark!

We took a trip to the "cemetery," so every one had to get ready.The girls got pretty tissue paper flower head bands, and the boys got...Moustaches! Doesn't Little Dude look great? He has the attitude to pull of a fake moustache if ever anyone did!

After an awesome potluck dinner of queso and enchiladas and some of the yummiest beans ever, we broke open the pinata.
And then we had our sugar skulls- okay, my cheater version of sugar skulls. I was a little intimidated to use merengue powder and make something that might not come out if it was too humid...it just sounded scary. So, throwing tradition to the wind and praying that I wouldn't offend anyone, I bought some giant marsmallows and used my kitchen shears to sort of shape them into skulls, I added chocolate chips for eyes, and then we decorated them. Mr. Sahm is such an artist- his came out so much prettier than mine!
It was such a fun party, and I learned a lot about Dia De Los Muertos. Now I have to come up with a new idea for next year's party...