Our Annual Food Fight – A Halloween Alternative

It’s not too late! You can still host a neighborhood food fight! This is our 4th year doing it and each time we have one, more people come! It’s such a fun Halloween alternative – and without the candy hangover!

We typically only spend about an hour on the food fight & water balloon fight – so that all of the kids who come can get home before dark. Then we wash up for a family movie & slumber party in the house. So many fun memories are made & this has become one of our favorite family traditions!

Below is this year’s invitation to give you some inspiration! 

Here we are last year (before, during & after):

Tips that we’ve learned over the years:

• Wrap the table with a plastic tablecloth for easy clean-up – I even plastic wrap the benches so they don’t get stained.
• Move the table as FAR away from the house and windows as possible… One year we spend a couple hours scrubbing the stucco siding & windows vowing we’d never do that again!
• If possible, wear safety glasses, goggles or sunglasses – this will help you (moms & dads) from having to wipe off eyes every few minutes.
• Don’t use your best food – I pick-up cheap stuff in bulk cans from Costco, save our Juicing pulp, leftovers, and buy the cheapest food we can find since we will not eat it.
• Don’t serve the food scalding hot.
• If really little kids are joining you, explain to them that this is normally ‘not’ an ok thing to do, except on ‘Food Fight Night!’  It also helps to give them a safe little pile of food that they can eat while they figure it all out. But trust me, once they ‘get’ it, look out! =)
• Keep it short. We typically keep the whole event at about an hour. We spend about 30 minutes on the actual food fight & then about 20 minutes throwing water balloons at each other. And finally about 10 minutes to hose off. Once the neighborhood kids leave, we all pitch in for a quick clean-up & head inside for the rest of our fun.
• Keep a hose nearby for washing off outside. Be sure to rinse off the clothes from all food particles before throwing them in the washer.
• Set-up a camera on a tripod (Go-Pros work great), and watch it back slow motion – giggles for days!
• Have a ‘real’ meal ready to serve afterwards & special no or low-sugar treats to snack on all evening!

Oh, and by the way… Fake mustaches (like these) are a requirement at our party vs. dressing up! They almost always end up relocating to another part of the body and it’s become a hysterical tradition all its own!