Everyone loves a frightfully fun Halloween party. Get ready to be the ghost with the most this spooky season. All you need? A few ghoulishly great tips to transform your outdoor living space into a spooktacular Halloween oasis.
Send Out Spooky Invitations
A great way to ace your invites would be to draw inspiration from your favorite things at Halloween. It could be an ouija board, favorite tv shows or movies, decorations such as pumpkins, spiders, skulls – the list is endless. You can get them printed to customize your invite!
An elegant dinner party, for example, can have classy yet creepy invites with visual references to Mexican sugar skulls. These cues amp up the thematic elegance while still ringing true to your Halloween soiree.
If you’re strapped for time, you can even try digital evites. Playing around with simple shapes on a digital medium can provide simple but effective correspondence with your guests at a last moment’s notice.
Setting the Scene
An important aspect of a great halloween decor is setting up the environment with eerie elements. You can try going vintage with spooky, natural elements, offset against the gorish trappings of typical Halloween decor.
Try using artificial cobwebs, faux pumpkins, spider egg stacks, a cocooned skull, hang up a few skeletons at your porch/garden with a string of orange lights to create a visual statement.
Mark off areas where you don’t wish for guests to engage with. A simple skeletal design graphic printed on the dark fabric material of festively personalized dining set covers is the ticket for Halloween-tastic outdoor protection.
Illuminate Your House
Candles and special effect Halloween lighting are your best bet to haunt up your house! Create an immersively ghoulish atmosphere for guests to enjoy in the pale moonlight. You can even shine inventive lighting on your backyard with floods, strobes, or searchlights.
You might consider projecting lights on round shape mesh tarps for an added lightwork ambiance.
Charming Touches
Nothing speaks to Halloween quite like utilizing simple theatrics to transform your backyard garden into a creative spookscape. Using mini gravestones, carved out pumpkins, gargoyles, and fog provide intriguing ambiance for your guests.
Add in a couple of personalized and custom printed dining set covers to offset the scare-tastic elements of your backyard, along with custom outdoor pillow covers color themed to add to the overall vibe.
Have a Costume Contest
Another great way to make your Halloween party a hit is by having a fun costume contest with winners being awarded with fun gifts and a trophy. This would be a great start to your yearly Halloween traditions.
Have a Themed Party & Contest
Some great ideas for this contest could be from the media and pop culture we consume on a daily basis. Your favorite characters from movies and shows can be excellent choices for a ghostly great party.
Anti heroes and villains make great halloween costume parties so pick your favorite one and get going:
- Regina from Mean Girls could be a good choice with one of her signature outfits from the movie.
- Voldemort from Harry Potter.
- Cruella is easy to recreate with black, red and dalmation print.
- Kim Kadashian’s outfit at the Met Gala can be an easy look to recreate with a black robe, boots and a black face mask!
If you’re on the hunt for a group costume, look no further than rock, paper, scissors or s’mores – because Halloween is also about candies and food.
Serve Delicious Treats
One of the sure-shot ways to make your party a hit is serving delicious treats and food. Get creative and make the atmosphere more eerie with Halloween-themed cupcakes, cookies and cakes. These delish treats make every Halloween party a success!
Making the regular savoury items into your personalized Halloween menu is a winner as well, such as a cheesy, ghost-shaped pizza. Simply take your favorite pizza pie recipe and shape the dough as you would in the shape of a ghost.
Other items to include on your Halloween smorgasbord:
- Regular apple tarts
- Devilled eggs
- Candy corn
- Rice Krispy treats
- Chocolate apple pops
- Spooky Swedish meatballs
- Red chili enchiladas
- Candied apples
- And, of course, candy!
Play Classic Halloween Hits
Music plays a major role at parties and always helps set the mood. Creating a classic playlist of Halloween hits beforehand is definitely a necessity. You can use your favorite music streaming service to have them ready for a great night.
Amp up the creep factor with a playlist of excellently eerie songs for the season:
- Monster by Lady Gaga
- Nightmare by Halsey
- Everyday is Halloween by Ministry
- Dark Horse by Katy Perry
- Thriller by Michael Jackson
- Disturbia by Rihanna
- Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett
- I Put a Spell on You by Annie Lennox
- Superstition by Stevie Wonder
- Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr.
Look out for some vintage beats and background scores to keep up the momentum. These types of sounds provide ambiance and help to better tie your party together. All you have to do? Remove equipment covers from your outdoor speakers.
Bob for Apples
Fall fun and games can pumpkin-spice-up any party! What fall classic is better than a traditional apple bobbing brouhaha? Fill a large metal washing tub or basin with water, toss in a variety of seasonal favorites, and have guests try to get as many apples as possible using only their teeth.
Tell Ghost Stories
Storytelling is an art form that is as ancient as it gets and ghost stories never get old. Swapping ghost stories creates the perfect Halloween atmosphere. Sit in a circle with minimal lighting to truly set the mood and take things up a notch with a visit from the Ouija board.
Feel the eerie vibe with heavy air and tension set in as people tell one ghoulish tale one after another! You can even look up terrifying stories to read aloud or act out at your party to get spooky x 10!
Ad-Lib Scary Stories
Take a cue from Mad Libs and have guests make up stories for your party with certain writing prompts. Try the following ideas to cook up their creativity:
- The events of a bad dream where someone dies start to come true the next day.
- You’re lost in the woods when the sounds that accompany Jason echo in the trees.
- A stalker stares at you from the sidewalk… but when you get your boyfriend… he’s gone…
A few tips for creating great stories and story ideas: use your environment, use fears that are either universal or you know at least one guest has, and leverage the fear of the unknown. Who knows – you might even create the next great horror franchise!
Serve Delicious Fall Drinks
Halloween is that one day where you can have the most over-the-top and gaudy drinks to level up your party. Get out your cocktail shakers and bar equipment and get ready to make some fun cocktails!
All the regular cocktails such as old fashioneds, gin & tonics, martinis, Bloody Mary’s, and Moscow mules can be adapted into Halloween inspired drinks. Get ready with creative names and you are ready to have a blast. Make sure to have some pumpkin lattes and hot chocolate with marshmallows for the kids too.
Try this Zombie punch:
- .5 oz vodka
- .5 oz gin
- .5 oz white rum
- .5 oz triple sec
- .1 oz fresh lemon juice
- .1 oz simple syrup
- .1 oz grenadine
- Some muddled mint leaves and strawberries.
In a tall glass, add syrup, lemon juice and muddled mint and strawberries. Mix it well Add some ice to a cocktail shaker with rum, gin, vodka and triple sec. Add all the things to the shaker and shake it vigorously. Strain it in a glass with some more ice in it. Your boozy, blood-red punch is ready!
Start Some Party Games
One thing that would help your guests to interact with each other is games! They are a great way to add activities to your event without any additional costs. Think of traditional games like passing the parcel with a Halloween twist, freeze and dance in costumes, relay races with scare crows.
Halloween Feels
Create a sensory game where guests have to dig in a box and guess what is inside. The idea is to find grocery items that can imitate really gross things. You could use canned tomatoes (hearts), canned corn (teeth), cut up balloons (skin), cooked & oiled spaghetti (worms), peeled grapes (eyeballs), or grape stems (spider legs).
Think of weird things and find a close substitute from things available at your home or a nearby store. You just need a box with a hole big enough for the hand to go inside but not enough for the contents to be visible. The person who guesses the maximum number of items wins!
Play Halloween Movies
Whether you are into horrors or thrillers (or both!), movies offer something for everybody. When it comes to picking out the perfect spooky movie for your Halloween movie night, consider sticking to a set theme from the larger horror genre. This will give you a nicer idea for not only your movie selections but also the décor and themed treats you might serve.
Give Out Goodie Bags
End your perfect Halloween party by distributing goodie bags to your guests. It will surely earn you brownie points and make it classy too. Fill Halloween treat bags with sweets and a festive trinket or three.
It is your decision to reserve this for neighbors, close family friends, or every trick-or-treater who comes at your door. The trick is to personally curate these bags with stuff that’s kooky, playful and fun.
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