Recently, we decided to host a small gathering around Halloween. After all, my husband and I used to host Halloween parties every year for adults to dress up and have fun. We always selected and voted a theme months in advance and everyone would come to the party with their take on that theme. It was always so much fun.

Many years and a couple of kids later, we have started to host a small gathering around Halloween once again. However, there are always get togethers that have interfered with our Halloween party, so we decided on a November party instead. I usually choose a theme for the gathering, and while we no longer require dressing up, it is highly encouraged. Through it all, I have discovered the fun of making party props to go along with the party theme.

This year, my kids and I decided to do Nightmare Before Christmas. Of course, we hosted this party after Halloween had ended and I wasn’t able to get those coveted themed items on an after-Halloween sale anywhere. In fact, they disappeared quite quickly and showed up on the after market at double the price. I scoured the internet for some awesome ideas to make it fun without the cost.

That is when I stumbled across the idea of making my own NBC Mayor of Halloweentown. The search for the perfect used lampshade was on! I needed something just the right size, shape, and texture. I selected a crazy ivy leaf printed lampshade at a local thrift shop. Right off the bat, I thought I might have made a serious error in my selection as the ivy print was very difficult to cover, but after three coats of white acrylic paint, the horrible print was finally perfectly disguised.

The researching and sketching out the different faces of the Mayor became quite a task. I had to select on angry or sad face and one happy or excited face because the Mayor does, in fact, have two faces. After I made my choices, I sketched them onto the lampshade and began the daunting task of painting the faces.

Once I was satisfied with my lampshade head, I remembered a crazy felt top hat that I had constructed for a costume the previous year and decided to reuse that. Initially, I was only going to make his head and put it on a lamp, but after all of my effort, I really wasn’t satisfied stopping there. I thought about it for a couple of days and finally had an idea. I ran to a local dollar store and bought a laundry basket and some black poster board. I crafted his body.

Years ago, my child had to make a scarecrow for a school competition. The legs of that scarecrow were made from pieces of a large carpet roll tube and we used paper mache’ and cardboard to craft our own boots. The only parts I kept from that project were the legs and boots because that carpet roll was not easy to cut through and those boots took a while to make. I just reused those same legs and boots for this project. A new coat of black paint and they worked perfectly. The Mayor was complete!

Besides the Mayor, my youngest insisted that our party have Zero. I drew out his head on cardboard and used that as a template to trace onto white cloth. A little bit of sewing, stuffing, fabric paint, and decorating and Zero came to life. I used pipe cleaners on the edges of the fabric so I could shape it a bit and then we hung him from a light to make it look like he was floating around.

My oldest child took a wreath and garland that we bought from the local thrift store and made him look like the man-eating wreath that was shown for a very brief moment in the movie. We ended up hanging it from a photo backdrop and our guests took pictures with him.

You can’t have a party without cake. Even for a pure amateur baker such as myself, Jack’s face is really simple to make into a cake. I made my cake with white homemade whipped icing and I used a black decorating gel to draw his face.

We decorated the rest of the house with our remaining Christmas and Halloween decorations which really worked out. When it came to party clean-up, we only had to take down the Halloween stuff and we were already decorated for Christmas.

I highly recommend doing a Nightmare Before Christmas party if you want to have a gathering between Halloween and Christmas. There are so many more prop ideas to go with this theme. . If I had the extra time, I would have certainly created more characters to place around the party. Who knows, I may end up repeating this theme in the future and try adding a few more exciting homemade props.

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