Cool Ghouls, Spooky Snacks, Wicked Windows, Creepy Coffins, Evil Embellishments: Planning The Perfect Halloween PartyOct 12 '06 (Updated May 25 '08) Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line ...pumpkins grin with grand despair ... on all hallows eve ... Have you ever started writing a review and thought, "I'll finish it later"? That was how this one started, it was the middle of the summer and I knew that it was going to take a long time to go through all the cool stuff that we've done over the years. I have no idea if there is a word limit for editorials but I am sure that this one is really going to test the parameters of what the site can handle for one single submission. If you've read any of my reviews you know that I am a complete nut for Halloween. Even before October first rolls around I am scouting the stores for new products from Wilton and ordering things online to decorate the house. I will never claim to be the queen of scream or the person that always has the best looking house on the block but one thing I will say is this, anyone that leaves one of my Halloween parties with an empty stomach or a sour puss on their face has only themselves to blame. Halloween is the one time of year that you can be anything you want; people don't gawk at you or make comments that you need to 'grow up' … no, you can be anything your little heart desires. Planning an awesome Halloween party can be a lot of work but it should never be something that you dread doing. If the only reason you are doing it is to impress people then at the end of the night not only are you going to have a huge mess to clean up but you are going to be completely miserable. You can make things simple and basic or you can go all out and have everyone talking about it until next Halloween rolls around. Before you do anything you have to sit down and look at the number of people that are going to be invited, the age range, your budget and how much time you have to prepare. If you wait until a couple of days before Halloween to get started you are going to have to deal with picked through things at the store and a lot of people saying, "Sorry, we already have plans". Taking Stock Before you start your shopping you need to establish what you have, what you want and what you need. Planning out your trips will eliminate wasted time and buying things that you won't necessarily need. Go through your old Halloween things to see what needs replaced or fixed, there's nothing worse than thinking you have something then finding out - usually at the last minute - that it's broken. If you aren't organized then this is a good time to start; invest in some plastic totes to store things in and label them. You can buy colored ones [red for Christmas, pink for Easter, orange for Halloween etc] and while they might cost a dollar or two more, it's easier to spot them on a shelf if a label falls or wears off. Once you know what you have to work with, it's time to start planning your list of things to buy. Things You Will Need If you aren't someone that goes all out for Halloween but you want to plan a party that will make all the soccer moms green with envy, you have to have some key essentials. Cheap oilet paper is a great thing to have around; use it to wrap larger things to give them a creepy feel. Use it on the corners of picture frames or large mirrors, wrap it around the backs of chairs and to cover larger pieces of furniture. Fake spider webbing is great to use almost anywhere inside or outside the house but you might want to be careful if you hang it outside, you might end up with spiders making a home in it. They have a glow in the dark version now that looks creepy and scary but doesn't cost more than the regular stuff. Be sure to look for the bags that have plastic spiders in them, these are awesome to add to the spider webbing and can be used over and over every year. Hit your local appliance store to get large boxes from stoves, refrigerators, microwave ovens and plasma televisions. These are great to have to make tombstones and coffins from, just make sure you get them before they have been sitting outside for a while, you never know what bugs might crawl in there and take up residence. Candles are always a nice touch but not if you are having an all ages party, little kids might bump them or be tempted to stick their fingers in the flame or wax. If this is a concern, buy some cheap flashlights, decorate paper sandwich bags and slip them over the flashlights I once said that anything can be made into a weapon [completely different editorial folks], well, the same thing can be said about Halloween decorations and things that you can use to make your house spooky and creepy. Things like 3M Assorted Color Electrical Tape Five Pack can be used to make skull and crossbones on doors, poster paints can be used to make tombstones or for those with an artistic flair, buy the window paints [generally used for overzealous parents of future sport stars] that are sold at auto stores and add some ghosts, bats and spooky eyes to the corners of windows. When you stop and thing about it, almost anything can be made into a Halloween decoration. Think I am kidding? A common wooden pencil can be shoved into the side of a fake head - instant decoration. Take your old computer cords and mice [computer mice, not real ones] and wrap them around a dummy that you make from old clothes stuffed with newspaper. Add a silly sign like "The internet wasn't fast enough" or "I was speeding on the information superhighway" and you have something else that will scare the snot out of people. Using your imagination to come up with stuff is a lot better than walking into a store and buying premade stuff and spending a fortune on it. Food & Drink The amount of food you need depends on a few things; the number of guests you have invited, if it is going to be a full on dinner and the age range. I will break this down into smaller sections so you don't get too overwhelmed with things, something that is easy to do when planning a party. My best advice is to keep things as simple as possible and do some testing a few weeks before the party; you don't want to make something for the first time and have it turn out bad. Don't be afraid to ask for help, if you are having more than ten people attending, make sure that everyone is 'on the same page' about who is bringing what. The last thing you want is for everyone to show up bringing the same thing. Trust me, I had that happen more than a few time and a small war broke out when three soccer moms all arrived with spinach dip and they were practically force feeding it to everyone trying to strong-arm them into saying their theirs was the best. Face the fact about food for a party; fried chicken, meatloaf and lasagna aren't going to cut it. Who wants to spend the entire party in the kitchen cooking? I go with simple things that I can make a day or two in advance; pasta salad, deviled eggs, cubed meat and cheese trays and things that don't require a lot of 'kitchen smarts' to prepare. My advice is to avoid anything that needs to be at an extremely cold or hot temperature [soups, mayonnaise, fish etc]. This puts a lot less pressure on you to be hovering over the food table making sure that the cold things are cold and the hot things are hot. Likewise, this removes the dangers of younger kids playing with heating elements or candles that can be used to keep food hot. If you insist on serving something hot, go with a ham barbeque, chili or stew concoction that you can have in a crock pot. Snacks Finger Foods [literally!]: Take stalks of celery and slice them into three inch pieces then cut them in half so you have long thin pieces. Use tomatoes or pimento pieces and make tear drop shapes that look like fingernails and put them on the ends of the celery. Another cool thing to do is to make deviled eggs and add some food dye to the yolk when you are mixing in the mustard and mayonnaise. You can make bloodshot eyes if you want but I like to add black food dye to it then sprinkle it with paprika. The funny thing about this is that if you add some extra black dye, people that eat it will end up with a black tongue and mouth. If you have a large muffin or cupcake pan use it to have treats out and about; use cupcake liners like the Spooky Ghost and Dancing Skeletons from Wilton to serve up snack mixes that you make with Halloween M&M's, Chex Mix and marshmallows. If you have one of the large 24 count muffin pans you can have a lot of different things in it; brownies, cupcakes, chocolate nut clusters and SLOP [explained later] are all great things to serve. Get the kids involved with this; have them walk around with the pans and serve them to people. While not a traditional Halloween item, "Pan De Los Muertos" [Bread of The Dead] is a nice thing to whip up. This isn't something that you are going to want to try out at the last minute so be sure to give it a test run about a week before the party. If you are planning a full on dinner, go with creepy and spooky foods like spaghetti [buy colored pasta to make it even scarier], Brainy Meatballs [more on that later], casseroles, sloppy tacos and other things that people can 'make' to suit their own tastes. When people say that they are planning a full meal for guests I always laugh; most of the time people are too busy snacking to care about 'real food' and you end up with a refrigerator full of stuff. While most people opt to go the potato chip, pretzel and candy route for snacks, making some from 'scratch' a day or two ahead of time is always a lot of fun. There are more than a few cookbooks that are dedicated to snacks and finger foods for Halloween but don't feel that you have to stick with them or do them exactly as you see them depicted. If you have marshmallows, baking chips, licorice and some toothpicks you can make a lot of different things from just those few items. Before you start shopping for food items, know what you have at home, know exactly what you need to get from different stores and make a list of what everyone else is bringing. Beverages If you want to go all out, hit the Vampire Wine website and order a case to have on hand. The designs on the bottles are beautiful and contrary to what most people think, it isn't all that more expensive than regular wine. Liquor stores do sell this in October but it can be hard to find in some areas. For those who choose not to indulge in spirits, make a large bowl of punch but add some spooky things to the ice cubes; plastic spiders, bugs, plastic ice cubes in Halloween shapes and gummy worms are all cool things to add to it. Start making the ice cubes a few days before the event so you will have enough of them to add to the bowl. You can get the plastic creepy crawlies at places like Party City and seasonal places like Scream and Fangtasm. Of course you can do the same thing with soda; just toss the cubes into the glass and be prepared to see people freak out when they look down and see "something" in their ice cube. Lastly, add some scare to your tableware with cool things like Plastic Halloween Character Goblets and some spooky cutlery. These are things that are going to add some nice finishing touches to your party and will have everyone asking you where you got them. SLOP: Clearing The Cabinets What is Slop? Well, you know those ten almost empty boxes of breakfast cereal you have in the cabinet, the practically empty bags of chips and pretzels ... grab them all and toss them into a bowl. Of course you are going to want to make sure that there aren't any bugs in any of the bags or boxes [evil grin, or leave them in]. Once you have everything mixed take a bag of mini marshmallows and add that to it. Depending on the size of the bowl, you may need to have more than one bag of chocolate chips to melt to pour over the Slop. You want it to coat it to hold it in clumps but not so much that it comes out looking like a huge dung beetle ball. The easiest way to make this is to scoop a few tablespoons into cupcake liners that are already inside a muffin tin. Then drizzle the melted chocolate over it and allow it to set up for at least two hours. To make this even creepier, use white chocolate and add some red dye to it. You will want to make sure that you use a tint or dye that is made for chocolate or candy, I highly suggest the Halloween Candy Color Set as a starter. To go all the way with this, when the chocolate is setting, add some spooky sprinkles to the tops of them. You get rid of the cereal that no one else wants to eat, clear out the cabinets and get to cross off one of the snacks from the party list. Brainy Meatballs Ahhh, the wonders of cheese. To make these spooky treats that are sure to gross everyone out start with some ground beef. You can add some ground pork to it if you want to add some spice but most people stick with the basics. Add some bread crumbs, Romano cheese, a few eggs and what ever spices you want. Make them into balls or ovals [like mini footballs] and fry them. You can bake them if you want but frying will let the outsides get a little crunchy. When they have cooled cut them in half and lay them on a cookie tray that you have lined with parchment paper, this makes the clean up a little easier but you will still have to wash it because of the grease that will come out of them. Use canned 'squeeze cheese' to make squiggles on the meatballs so it looks a little more like a brain. As strange as it may seem, there was once a mold that you could use to make these but the company that put them out went out of business. A nice twist to this is to go to a science store and get a plastic brain mold and use it to make a Jell-O Brain. You can add all sorts of creepy things to it while the gelatin is setting up but make sure that everything is edible. Hey, let it never be said that geeks don't know how to creep people out. Decorations This is something that kids seem to get a real kick out of; if there is any possibility that they can scare the crap out of someone, they are all for it. Sure everyone has those tacky skeletons and plastic pumpkins all over the place but if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right. You can make gravestones [tombstones] with some cardboard and gray spray paint. If you have someone that you aren't all that fond of, be sure to write their name on the tombstone and if they give you a snide look, laugh it off. Spider web material is inexpensive and can be used for a lot of different things but if you live in a wooded area you may have some real life spiders move in so when the festivities are over, pitch it instead of trying to save it for next year. Pumpkins are a lot of fun to carve and you can get the whole family in on the act but instead of just carving the same old 'jack-o-lantern' face on it, look online for print outs that you can use for SpongeBob SquarePants, Disney characters and even Beavis & Butthead. Sure this takes some work to do but come on, what on earth could be cooler than having Beavis & Butthead on a pumpkin? Be sure to invest in a good pumpkin carving set so you can get the job done the right way. Sometimes all a room needs is a change in lighting; his places like Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts to get a black light or colored light bulbs that you can use in your regular light outlets. Make sure that people know their way around first and that there is adequate lighting for doorways and large things that can hurt people like coffee tables and end tables. Yes, that is the voice of experience talking. One year we took all of our old sheets and cut slits in them then hung them from the corners of the room; when you looked up it gave you the illusion that the ceiling was moving; to make it even more spooky we had some small battery powered fans blowing on the sheets. It's amazing how something that simple could make such an impression on people. That coupled with the different colored light bulbs really made some of the rooms look like they were decorated by some team of professionals, yeah, right, join me in a good hearty laugh. You could go all out for a fog machine but if it isn't something that you are going to be using all the time and you really have to have one, there are places that do rent them. You will have to make sure that you are using the right product in it [dry ice or liquid] so don't wait until the last minute to get one. Sometimes it is the simplest things that scare people the most; rubber bats hanging from the ceiling, a nice thick coating of Vaseline on the railing and my personal favorite, bathroom pranks. A few years ago the boys started messing around with the two way radios and decided to put one inside a plastic pumpkin that I had in the bathroom. When someone went in there to 'use the facilities' they almost passed out when they heard someone say, "Hey, aren't you gonna wash your hands?!?" You could do the same thing with noises; have a two way radio somewhere in a room and then have someone out of earshot make noises. That is one way to ensure that people aren't going to be hogging the bathroom! The Doorway of Doom This is something that does take a little bit of time to do and requires someone with a lot of patience. Find a room in the house that won't be used for the party and have someone inside it; use cheap toilet paper to cover the opening and hang a sign in front of it saying something like "Beware: Monster Inside". Make sure that the toilet paper is covering all the parts of the doorway so curious kids can't see inside. When you find a small group of kids that think they are 'tough', walk them by the door and have the monster rip through the toilet paper. We did this a few years ago and there was a kid that was so scared he refused to ever go down that hallway again. If you have older kids that have lost their zest for Halloween [blasphemy] this is a nice way to include them in things. Just tell them they get the chance to scare the snot out of little kids and they will gleefully join in on the festivities. This is also a nice thing to spring on an adult if they have had a little too much to drink but be warned ... you might have to end up cleaning up more than pieces of toilet paper. Music & Merriment There is no shortage of spooky music or sounds to pick from; you can go with a mix of music or buy cassettes or CD's with sound effects on them. If you are going with the latter I suggest that you use a CD version so you can shuffle the play sequence so you aren't hearing the same things every ten minutes. One of my all time favorite Halloween CD's is Mannheim Steamroller Halloween but that might be a bit too much for the younger kids to have to listen to. There are some mixes that are made just for kids; granted most of them are on the cheesy side but come on, you can't expect stellar music when they cost about four dollars a pop. Check out Halloween Hoe Down or Kids Pop Halloween Hits for music if you are having a mix of adults and kids and if you want something to play outside to really scare the ghouls and monsters, then Trick or Treat Halloween Music is a good one to go with. Bobbing For Apples is always a fun thing but you have to make sure that you plan this out well. First off, you need to get a large enough tub to work with, I suggest going with a black or orange Trick or Treat Tub from Arrow Plastic. These cost a few dollars and are pretty durable so you can use them after the party for other things. Don't just grab a bag of apples at the grocery store, go through the loose ones [sold by the pound] to make sure there aren't any bruised or rotten ones and if possible, get ones with stems on them. Make it a little more challenging and toss in some fake apples, a cruel twist but hey, it is Halloween. Even meaner, make them Bob For Ducks and use the ultra cool Mini Glow In The Dark Halloween Ducks to make it even more difficult. Pin The Tail on The Ghost: The same thing as the game you played with a donkey only this time you use a ghost. For adults, give them a few really strong spins then tell them to get to work. You can do the same type of thing with bats if you hang them from the ceiling, see if adults can hit the bats with a stick, sort of like a piņata but without the cool candy inside. You'll want to have plenty of room for these types of games because the last thing you want is someone with a stick or baseball bat swinging at random. You may want to skip that one if people have been drinking; you don't want to end up having someone go to the emergency room. Scavenger hunts are always fun but to put a spooky spin on it, have people collect things like bones [plastic, not real], eyeballs [again, plastic, not real] and creepy things that you have around the house. This does require that you set things up before everyone arrives but it is great if you are having a mix of adults and kids. They can split up into teams so no one has an age advantage over anyone else. Set a time limit and make sure people know the property boundaries; you don't want someone digging up your neighbors dead cat and trying to claim it as a "bonus find". One cool thing that a neighbor did was to go to a tennis court and buy all the tennis balls that were damaged or that were going to be thrown out. Sure, he did get some weird looks when he asked to buy them but he had good reason to stock up on them. He spray painted them white and drew a big bloodshot eyeball on them and used them for the ultimate game of dodgeball. Get hit with one and not only were you out of the game but you ended up with a nice 'mystery bruise' the next day. That isn't something that you are going to want to play with young kids but if the idea really haunts you [oh my, another pun] then get the large plastic bouncy balls and paint them. Safety I remember when kids could go trick-or-treating until there wasn't a porch light on, these days some places have given up the door to door treat shakedown and now have things called Trunk 'N Treat. To me this is so insulting and if I were a kid, I'd be more than a little ticked. Even so, my thoughts on it aren't really a factor here. Keeping everyone safe is. Make sure that there are no obstacles or things that people can trip over. This means power cords, furniture, pets and decorations. Younger kids should be told exactly where they can play and the boundaries of the party. You don't want the party to end with a massive search for a child that wandered off or didn't know there the back yard ended. Food should be kept simple so that there's no chance that anyone would get sick from coleslaw, potato salad or meat that hasn't been kept at a certain temperature. If you are serving alcohol make sure that everyone is sober before they leave or better yet, insist that they leave the keys with someone who can judge their sobriety. Make sure you know your local laws for noise abatement so you don't have the police showing up asking you to turn down the music. Then again, that happened one year and we all thought that it was someone in costume. Man, that cop was more than a little irked that no one paid any attention to him when he told us to turn down the music. The Bottom Line Planning a Halloween party is something that I look forward to all year. I am always playing around with recipes and decorations so that when I open the door wearing my witch outfit, I know that I put my heart and soul into giving my guests one hell of a good time. How far you want to take your party planning is up to you but as I always say, if you are going to do something you might as well go all out. You can pull off an amazing party if you start planning about two weeks in advance but even if you only give yourself one week, you can still do some amazing things without going broke or having the same old boring stuff to eat, games to play and things to entertain kids. This is the one time of the year that you can be anything you want so don't forget to make yourself a costume. Keep things simple so you aren't burned out before the party even starts. Sure, I put a lot of time and effort into planning the 'perfect' Halloween party but even I know when to say 'when' and stop working .. and start partying! As always, thanks for the visit… ~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~ © 2006 Freak369 For more ideas about planning and decorating for your Halloween party, check out these books. If you can't find them at a bookstore, try your local library ... The Halloween Book, Crafts For Halloween, Haunt Your House for Halloween: Decorating Tricks & Party Treats, Halloween Fun For Everyone, My Very Own Halloween For some alternatives to handing out candy, check out my editorial entitled ... Trick-Or-Treat, Smell My Feet, Gimme Something Good To Eat! Putting A Spin On Halloween Treats! It goes without saying that this will be an ever expanding editorial as I am sure that I missed some things ...  |
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