How about go fish, bobbing for apples on strings tied to a tree instead of in water (that is kinda gross), paint small pumpkins, feeling guts and eyeballs (spaghetti and skinned grapes), popcorn balls, pixie sticks, and scary sounding music.

Our neighbor is having an open house pumpkin carving party - bring your own pumpkins. Everyone's got a pumpkin...you just provide newspaper - you can get some carving kits. They said they have some but it would be helpful to bring what you have. They're providing snacks - so bags of chips and stuff. I think its going to be fun for all ages. :)

We did this when we first moved in and it is a wonderful way to get to know the neighbors. We also did a pumpkin carving party, we bought a bunch of the kits so that we didn't have huge knives laying around. We bought a bunch of tealightes so we could get pictures of everyone's pumkins all together when complete. We served chili, hotdogs, and popcorn balls and kept it very simple. I don't really think we decorated at all, but if you wanted to make a big impact for low cost, tissue balls are super easy. If you cut the tissue ands with a straight point instead of curve it looks a little edgy for halloween. And spiderweb stuff is alwasy inexpensive and goes a long way!

My 4 year old daughter recently went to a birthday party where the kids each had a mini pumpkin to decorate with foam stickers and glitter glue. The kids loved it! I also think a slow cooker full of hot cocoa or cider would be a nice touch, as would one of chili, if you want to provide food. Finally, if you have your party during the day, you could buy a bunch of tote bags from Oriental Trading or Michaels and have the kids paint them for Trick-or-Treating later.

We party on the driveway every year, it has ecome a neighborhood tradition... drag out the fire pit, project a kid friendly movie on the garage door. Put out bunches of chairs, a cooler of adult and bevvies and mini bottled water. Set up a folding table w/ plates, napkins. It's a pot luck, so people bring whatever, as long as it is finger food. We order pizza delivery. People look forward to stopping by to visit and snack on their trick or treating journey, and we don't have to answer the door every 3 minutes!

If you have a safe parking lot available to use, I love Trunk or Treat. http://trunkortreat.homestead.com/

I would recommend checking out Martha Stewart's Real Simple Halloween ideas. Most of them are super simple and involve things like construction paper and tape. My friend made a bunch of her decorations and they are super cute (and cheap). You could set up a little craft station and all you'd need to provide would be tape, paper, scissors, maybe glue. Googly eyes are always a bonus with young kids and don't cost much. Glitter is also a huge hit.

I love Halloween parties! In addition to the ideas presented, including bobbing for apples on trees and pumpkin carving, how about having the kids mummify themselves by wrapping themselves with toilet paper or white crepe paper? I think that would be funny and easy to clean up after. :)
For adults, you could host a murder. This is a board game you could buy but it's easy to make it on your own if you're creative. Just think of suspects, alibis, a plot etc.

Hope you guys have fun!

For the adults, serve hot mulled wine. It's made our house the hit of the trick or treat route. Just buy a box of red wine, pour it into your crockpot and add your favorite mulling spices. We like cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, a bit of anise and nutmeg. Serve it in little dixie cups. Trick or Treat for the grownups.

Our neighborhood has a Halloween party every year on beggar's night. My two favorite activities:

-Wrap kids in butcher paper and have mummy races.
- Candy corn toss (yep, candy corn into paper cups from different distances)

We did a treasure hunt with the kids last year and they loved it! We hid clues all around the house in those tiny little plastic cauldren's that eventually led to treat bags for them. The older kids enjoyed reading the clues and helping the little ones.