Our son recently turned 12, and we celebrated with a small group of his friends over the weekend. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know that his previous parties have been in local parks and all decorations, food and games have been done by me! Check under the ‘Party’ tab above to see what we’ve done 😉 But this year was different – his last year at primary school, and his last year before becoming a teenager! So it was time for something extra special!
So I thought long and hard, made a couple of suggestions…and we settled on a ghost tour of Q Station. This site gives an amazing look into Australia’s history. The Quarantine Station opened in the 1830s, and only closed in 1984 after many thousands of people had been treated here.
If you find yourself in Sydney, it is definitely worth a visit! They do history tours during the day (or you can also just walk around on your own), and ghost tours at night. There are several different ghost tours; we did the Ghost Trackers family one.
Even though this party was at a venue and I didn’t need to come up with any games, there were still a few things I could do to make this party ‘ours’.
Let’s start with the invitations:
It was reasonably simple. I used a couple of photos from the Q Station website, and designed the invitation in Fotor. My sister-in-law put me on to this photo editing site as being very similar to the one I used to use until they put a cost on it. Nothing wrong with charging for a service, I just didn’t use it enough to want to do that.
The invitation was emailed to the guests.
I searched Pinterest for food and treat bag ideas, picking out the Halloween themed suggestions relating only to ghosts. You can see the inspiration I used pinned to my Ghost Tour Party board.
It is the end of Autumn here in Sydney, and the nights are getting quite cold. I needed to feed the boys, preferably with something hot! I was allowing for the drive to take about an hour, which was a bit of a problem with transporting hot food. I didn’t want to have to go into Manly to eat on a Saturday evening (very busy), but I did seriously consider ordering pizza as I was very nervous about this.
Some more searching, and I found an idea! Eskys (cold/chiller box) can also be used to keep food hot! I gave it a small test run prior to the party, and it worked well. So, while the food that I had prepared was being heated in the oven, I pre-warmed the Esky with hot water bottles. I lined it with towels, placed the hot foil-wrapped dishes in, topped with another towel, and had hot water bottles at each end of the Esky. When I got them out when we reached our destination, the dishes were still so hot I needed the towels to protect my hands!
So, what did we serve? Ghost pizzas and ghost sausage rolls! Also some chips, dips and biscuits/crackers, carrot sticks, and fruit. And juice and soft drink.
Here are the ghostly food items being prepped:
Home made pizza dough divided into small portions, and holes torn into the dough to form eyes and mouth. Covered with home made pizza sauce, then topped with ham and mozzarella, they were quite delicious!
The sausage rolls are made using pre-bought sheets of puff pastry, filled with my mix of mince. As well as including the usual breadcrumbs, egg, onion, garlic and capsicum in the mince mix, I also sneaked in some grated carrot and zucchini! Snip around the bottom of the rolls, and cut some eyes. I added small bits of capsicum into the eye holes after this photo was taken.
Here is our pre-tour food stop where the boys could run around and have some food. It was just near the Q Station and had plenty of space as well as an awesome view over Sydney harbour.
They also all got a bottle of Ghost Tears, aka water!
As it was starting to get dark, and just before we went to the tour meeting spot, we had some sparkler fun!
This was in lieu of birthday cake. They all got a birthday cupcake in their treat bags which I gave them at the end of the night.
It also included a few other snacks in case they were hungry after all the walking. And a torch, in case the dark was a bit much when they got home lol. The Ghost Poop labels I again made using Fotor. The ghost lollipop is just a square of tissue paper, tied with some thin ribbon.
Here they all are at the last stop of our tour – in the morgue
There was history, as well as plenty of ghostly stories! And all of the children in our group came home having seen or felt ‘something’. It really was a special night!
I can thoroughly recommend ghost tours at Q Station. No, I’m not being paid to say that! And all the staff there that I dealt with were knowledgeable and helpful. A huge thanks to them!
If you are after an unusual party idea, why not see if there is anywhere near you that hosts ghost tours!
Oh, just so you know, he didn’t entirely miss out on a birthday cake – here he is cutting the X-box controller cake I made for the family celebration the week before!
Linking up with:
The Pin Junkie, Twin Dragonfly Designs – The Handmade Hangout, Life With Lorelei – Home Matters, Shoestring Elegance – Thursday Favourite Things, Tatertots and Jello – Best Friday Features, Coffee With Us 3 – Pretty Pintastic Party, Oh My Heartsie Girl – Friday Features, Strawberry Butterscotch – Saturday Shuffle, Hello Little Home – Best of the Weekend, The SITS Girls – Saturday Sharefest, Claire Justine – Welcome to the Weekend, Mother2Mother – Sunday’s Best, Meet Our Life – Nifty Thrifty Sunday, Love of Home – Sundays at Home, My Husband Has Too Many Hobbies – Snickerdoodle Create, Bake, Make, That Recipe – Happiness is Homemade, DIY Showoff – That DIY Party, Plucky’s Second Thought – Cooking and Crafting With J&J, My Pinterventures – Merry Monday, Claire Justine – Creative Mondays, Create With Joy – Inspire Me Monday, I Should Be Mopping the Floor – Inspiration Monday, DIY180 – Dishing it and Digging It,
Saw it, Pinned it, Did it! 