Host a happy Halloween party — that’s fun for both kids and adults — at your own haunted house. Make it creepy or kooky, cover up in a costume, and keep the treats and tricks coming!
Eerie invitations
To invite your ghoulish guests, send out “pumpkin pal” invitations. Blow up orange balloons and write party details on them with glow-in-the-dark pens. Then, deflate the balloons and mail them to guests with instructions to inflate the balloons in a dark room to read the message.
Add plastic spiders and other creepy crawlers in the envelope to make the invite extra spooky.
Boo-tiful decorations
Turn your humble home into a haunted house with the following tips:
• Create a “spooktacular” party setting by stretching cobwebs with rubber spiders over the doors and party tables. Make the atmosphere even more frightening with a fog machine and scary music.
• You can also scare up a few ghosts by inflating white helium balloons and adding ghost faces and white crepe paper streamers. Then let the spooky ghosts float around the room.
Ghoulish games and activities
Party activities are a great way for kids and adults to have fun together:
• One idea is to create “Pumpkinheads.” Give each guest an inflated orange balloon and a permanent marker. Place guest’s names in a hat, then, have everyone secretly select a name. Draw that person’s face on a balloon. Then, let everyone try to match the Pumpkinhead to the guest.
• Hold a trick-or-treat treasure hunt by hiding creepy items like plastic spiders, gummy teeth, and slimy eyeballs throughout the party room. Break into teams and search for the ghoulish goodies.
Frightening refreshments
• Get creative — and creepy — by adding a floating green “hand” to your punch. To make the hand, freeze green tinted water in a rubber glove. To set the “handy” ice sculpture free from the glove, run the hand under warm water and peel back the glove. Float the ice hand in the punch bowl.
• You can also make worm-filled ice cubes by freezing water and gummy worms in ice trays.
• Finally, set out “body parts” as appetizers or snacks, such as Vienna sausages for fingers, deviled eggs for eyeballs, and tiny white mints for teeth.
Frightening favors
When the party ends, send guests home with ghoulish goodies such as glow sticks, vampire teeth, gummy worms, stage makeup kits and mini pumpkins. Let them select Halloween tricks and treats from a treasure chest and take home their booty as favor.
Penny Warner, the party planning expert for Balloon Time, has more than 25 years of experience as an author and party planner and has published more than 50 books. For more information, visit BalloonTime.com.
