How to Host a Halloween Party

How to Host a Halloween Party

A Halloween party is a great way to celebrate all things that make us jump! Scary witches, ghoulish zombies and creepy vampires will all want an invitation to the spookiest Halloween party on the block.From themes and decorations, scrumptious food and drinks, and fun costume competitions, you’ll be completely prepared for the most memorable fright night of your life. The trick (or treat) is to get your home looking spooky and stylish! Here are some tips to do just that:

Carved pumpkins for Halloween

Hair-raising Halloween Themes

To begin planning you need to come up with a theme. Choosing a scary theme will make sure your house looks stylishly creepy instead of confused and silly.

You could choose a haunted house theme, Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory, zombie apocalypse, or a witch’s lair. If you’re using your whole house, you could even assign a theme to each room.

Eerie Invites

A cool invitation is the first step to impressing your guests. Use your theme as inspiration and find some scary images to add some flair to your invites.

An invitation should include where and when the party is, whether they need a costume, if it’s BYO alcohol or if they should bring a plate of food.

Make sure to specify if kids are invited, and include information on activities you have planned for your guests.

Terrifying Interior Decorations

Use your theme as a guide for your house decorations. If you are going with a zombie theme, make the house look like an apocalyptic refuge. A witch’s lair might feature cobwebs, pentagrams and bubbling cauldrons.

If you are doing a haunted house theme you can get creative. Make a creepy portrait with eyes that follow you, and a rocking chair that rocks by itself.

You’ll need antique furniture but you don’t need to go scouring the op shops. Just buy new furniture that looks stylishly antique and has a witchy charm about it.

halloween-campaign-02

Light the house with candles or use green, red and purple party lights to light each room. Play an old horror movie on your TV to set the mood. Many of Bela Lugosi’s films are available to stream on YouTube.

Frightening Yard Decorations

Your front yard or entryway’s decoration is almost as important as the rest of the house. A little graveyard is a great way to prime your guests for what they’ll find inside.

Have skeletons crawling out of the graves and litter the yard with fake cobwebs and spiders. Draw some scary faces on some white sheets and hang them from trees. Don’t forget to light your porch with carved pumpkins.

Spine-chilling Drinks

Fancy cocktails are great for a Halloween party, and you’re sure to find a few that fit perfectly in with your theme.

But if you can’t afford a lot of spirits, don’t fret. Throw together a cauldron of supernatural punch. Double, double toil and trouble!

Use a little food dye to accentuate the colour, whether that be blood red or gruesome green. Add fruit and give them creepy names.

You can also use dry ice to give your punch a ghastly cauldron effect. Make sure you have non-alcoholic options.

Ghoulish Lollies & Devilish Desserts

Make your buffet table full of lollies and desserts very much part of your decorations. Bake a cake centrepiece and use some fondant icing to create a brain cake. Decorate with red jam and green sprinkles.

A brain cake made with fondant icing

Make it look nice and spooky with fairy floss cobwebs and jars of gummy worms, and jelly cups with lychee eyeballs. Don’t worry if you have an excess of lollies, guests can take some home in their gruesome goodie bags.

Don’t forget to stock up on some savoury food. Too many sweets and your guests might suffer a sugar crash and have to go home early! Bake some pumpkin muffins. Cocktail franks can double as dismembered fingers and an antipasto platter is full of ghoulish delights.

Creepy Costume Competition

Who doesn’t love a spine-chilling Halloween costume? To get everyone excited for your party and make sure everyone joins in the fun of dressing up, hold a costume competition.

Your competition categories might rely on your theme. Categories can include most frightening, most gruesome, the funniest or most kooky. Maybe you could have a theme of costume for your party, such as a coming as something that begins with the same letter as your name, or as your spirit animal, for example. Or you can crown a zombie king and zombie queen.

It’s always a great idea to have spare costumes on hand, for those who forget their costumes.

Catherine Avatar