This Halloween Party on a $25 Budget has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone.
Now, if you follow my blog, you know that I LOVE to craft things for parties (especially Halloween) and I’m often making recipes from scratch. But this year, I have two babies in my belly and I have NO energy to make anything, so I hit up the 99 Cents Only store for all of my Halloween party items to throw a Halloween Party on a $25 Budget! My crafting rule is “make it if you can make it better or for less money than you can buy it”, but my other crafting rule is ” just buy it if you don’t have the time or energy!” We just moved out of my in-laws house where we would get over 1,000 kids trick-or-treating for Halloween, and I don’t have the energy to decorate our house this year, so I figured we would go over to the old house (where my in-laws now live since they moved out to California from North Carolina) and show them the ropes with a little family party. With 1,000 trick-or-treaters ringing the doorbell, you have to be prepared, so I usually make a simple dinner such as Mac and Cheese or Pizza, something that can easily be re-warmed, and then I have drinks and dessert ready. For a small party of 5, I still wanted a little theme and decor, so I whipped up this quick party for under $25 including the decorations, cupcakes, and Eye of the Newt Punch!
The decorations cost $11 total, the ingredients for the cupcakes cost $6, and the ingredients for the Eye of the Newt Punch cost $8. The Eye of the Newt Punch was a big hit with my husband! He thought it smelled SO good! It’s one of those recipes where you just kind of add a little bit of this and a little bit of that until you get to the taste you want, plus, you may need more or less depending on the size of your crowd, but I’ll put up my recipe below.
- 4-6 cups pineapple juice
- 1 liter ginger ale
- ½ cup lime juice
- 1 package of green drink mix (Kool-Aid or Hawaiian Punch)
- frozen grapes, divded
- Mix all of the ingredients together.
- Add a bit more of one or another to get it to taste exactly how you want.
- Add frozen "Newt Eye" grapes.
- Keep some frozen grapes separate to use as a garnish.
- Double or triple receipe if needed to serve a large crowd.
And the box-mix cupcakes were hits as well! I simply added some black food coloring to the cupcake mix and some green food coloring to half the frosting to add a bit of Halloween.




I love those decorations! And that punch. What a cool idea! Our neighborhood is super quiet when it comes to trick-or-treaters (we get about 10, if we’re lucky)…but that isn’t going to stop me from hosting a fun party like this. Thanks for the ideas and inspiration! #client
I moved into a studio this year so no huge halloween party for me 🙁 Those bats are such a steal – there are some real gems at 99 cent stores!