Good thread, peewee! Your "scaled back" attendence is still way more than we've ever done, but maybe these ideas will help.

- "The Addams Family": You send invitations that explain that the Addams Family will be having a reunion on the night of your party. You tell your guests, on your invite, that this reunion is for the (your area) branch, as the California Addamses, Morticia, Gomez, et al. won't be able to come. The fun part is, you make up "Addams" names for your guests (when we did it, my mother-in-law was "Grandma Whack", our neighbor was "Cousin Insomnia and her husband, Thudd", myself and two friends were Siamese triples who'd been separated at birth, and so on). You can have a ball coming up with all those wild names! What you're doing is assigning roles rather like one of those boxed "How to Host a Murder" Games. Most people will know about the Addams family and dress accordingly. And decorating your house in the proper Addams style should be a snap.

- Pirates: same idea, only your invites go with pirate names. The fun thing about this is, it's up to your guests to decide what the characters you've assigned to them will look like.

- We've also done witches. Ghosts, zombies, and vampires would work with this type of invitation-names-character party, too. By the way, it's a spooky touch to go out late at night well before your party and hand deliver your invites, leaving them in your guests' mailboxes, in a door, or some other spot so the invites just "turned up", rather than having been mailed.

Help any?

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Mark McG.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.