An Awesome Nightmare Before Christmas Party – Easy & Inexpensive Ideas

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Get ready for some spooky and festive fun! Getting ready to celebrate Christmas but still holding onto Halloween? OR getting ready for Halloween but want to bring out the Christmas decorations??? Then Nightmare Before Christmas is perfect for you 🙂 We threw our mini Nightmare Before Christmas Party around Halloween, so we had a lot of spookiness to share! Read on to check out our party ideas!

DECORATIONS

Halloween (and possibly Christmas) decorations are perfect for a Nightmare Before Christmas party! For our party, we opted for creating Halloween Town with darker decorations (and some glow lights ;). And on all tables, we spread out some Nightmare Before Christmas Stickers everywhere – more on that later.

We also had the movie playing in the background, so anyone could sit down and stay awhile!

THE TABLE

Our table was easy to set up as we picked the Jack Tableware Set. For other items, we used solid black colors.

We also added a few Nightmare Before Christmas Figurines for each table setting.

In the center, we set up a small Nightmare Before Christmas Tree.

PARTY FOOD

There is no shortage of Halloween or Christmas inspired food recipes, so there’s quite a spread to pick from! In the story, Sally makes Jack a skeleton fish and a greenish soup… IF your guests are little ones, this might not be the most appealing thing to serve up though you could be brave and try it out 😉 Instead, we opted for some traditional Halloween snacks and food. BUT we also had a small, DIY dessert table where kids could make their own jack skeleton cookies (easily) using white fudge covered oreos, edible eyes, and some black frosting.

GAMES & ACTIVITIES

Jack Balloons: Using some solid white balloons, black markers, and some lung power, you can create some fun Jack faces. Then use the balloons to have some simple games (like keep the balloon in the air or pop all the balloons ;)). Note: if you’re guests are small, it might be easiest to have a few balloons already blown up for them – or to use some helium balloons!
Perler Bead Table: A perler bead table is a great craft to set out for kids to create something to take home! We had a few Perler Bead Jack and Perler Bead Sally sets, but you could also opt for a Nightmare Before Christmas Perler Bead Kit with some extra perler beads depending on the size of your party. Note: this activity is great for slightly older kids (the perler beads are really small, so might be tough for younger kids). BUT, to finish the creation, you do need an adult to iron the craft in order to fuse the beads together.
Card Games: When possible, we like to set out a deck of cards that fits the party theme. It’s a great way to get random card games and magic tricks going! With the Nightmare Before Christmas Deck of Cards, we had quite a few magic tricks pop up! 🙂
Sticker Hunt: This activity works soooo well that we use it in almost every party! Stickers are a great way of decorating party tables (as table scatter). For some of our last activities, we have a ‘sticker hunt’ and let the little ones run around collecting as many as possible! They get to keep or trade whichever ones they find! For this party, kids picked up the Nightmare Before Christmas Stickers that were spread out around the party area!

GOODIE BAGS & GIVE-A-WAYS

For our goodie bags, kids could take home anything that they created, as well as stickers they found/traded, and the mini figurine by their plate 🙂 We also added in some little trinkets and Nightmare Before Christmas Lollipops.

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you so much for checking out our party planning post! Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next celebration!

If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. Also, If you haven’t already and are still looking for that perfect party theme, feel free to check out some of our other party ideas, Halloween ideas, or Christmas ideas!

Happy Party Planning 🙂