Halloween is an enchanted holiday where nothing is as it seems. It’s a time of year when everyone can get swept up in the magic of the season and enjoy a world filled with witches and pumpkins and vampires. Halloween is the perfect occasion to dress up both your surroundings and yourself, creating a fantasy world limited only by your imagination. Halloween parties provide abundant opportunities for delighting your friends and neighbors. Here are some ways you can make your Halloween party really memorable this year.
Theme
Halloween comes pre-packaged with a built-in theme, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get more specific. Genre costume parties make Halloween even more exciting. Here are some options for themes that don’t limit the costume options.
Masquerade: A masquerade theme can provide an air of extravagance and “mystique” that you might not get otherwise. Issue fancy invitations and have a traditional “unmasking” scheduled for the end of the night.
Cartoon Characters: Everyone has at least one cartoon character they love. By choosing “cartoon characters” as a theme you allow people to be as creative as they like. You also have years of television and motion pictures to use as inspiration, so this can appeal to all ages. You can decorate with logos of prominent cartoon companies and pictures of characters. Incorporate characters into the snacks as well. Sites like Disney and Looney Tunes are great places to start for ideas.
Choose a Decade: Pick a decade, any decade (in the 20th century preferably) and have people come dressed in clothes from that era. Include fact-sheets with your invitations that list celebrities and popular fashions in the time period that you choose.
Food
A party isn’t a party without some snacks, and Halloween offers a lot of opportunities for truly spectacular treats. You can take inspiration from the creepy creatures that appear during Halloween to produce some inventive dishes. Whether you put a creepy hand in the bottom of the party mix, or creative appetizers that look like eyeballs, your buffet table can definitely set the tone for the party.
There are a lot of different ways to incorporate the Halloween theme into your feast. Cupcake molds, cookie cutters, and Jell-O molds offer a simple opportunity to create treats with all sorts of fun shapes. You can also use food color to make foods pumpkin-orange, noxiously green, or blood-red.
A simple and creative treat you can whip up quickly is Skeleton Bones or Witch’s Fingers. Using bread, cookies, string cheese, pretzels covered in chocolate or anything you can mold into a shape, you can have creepy looking bones or fingers in minutes. Add nuts or cut out pieces of Jell-O for the fingernails.
Preserving the Memories
A Halloween party combines costumes, food, and friends, which means it’ll be worth remembering. Be sure to take a ton of photos of the evening’s events. You can share them on social networks, and create digital photo books to share with the attendees.
A few days after the event, you can also send a “thank-you for coming” note with a picture of a memorable moment from the party. You can use a traditional greeting card, or customize a free eCard. With eCards you can fully customize the design and message for each individual guest. You also get the benefit of instant delivery. This extra memento of your party is something that the recipient can keep forever.
Throwing a memorable Halloween party can be tricky. They happen year in and year out, and after a while they can all blend together in the mind. So, to have a truly outstanding Halloween party, you’ll need to plan ahead. Gather your friends, prepare a theme, get creative with your food and drinks, and don’t forget to preserve the memories. Every memory with friends and family should be cherished, so don’t be afraid to make plenty of reminders!
Stephanie is the Sr. Marketing Manager at Punchbowl, Inc. She blogs about celebrations, party planning, and free eCards.
Halloween is one of my favorite times of year, and probably my favorite holiday! I love the idea of a them party rather than a regular costume party. I think it would be really fun to see what kind of creative things people come up with!
Jennifer, I completely agree! It’s fun to see how people can be inspired so differently by the same prompt or idea. And Halloween is fun because nothing is really off-limits. You can look as outrageous as you want, and people will love it.
Halloween is such a fun time of year and definitely the most fun type of parties!
Halloween is definitely the perfect time to have fun and be silly. You and your family will have fun in preparing for your guests and dressing-up for the cameras!
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more attention. I’ll probably be back again to read more, thanks for the info!
Do you have any Halloween costumes and decoration ideas for 2013 that make it fun, horror and memorable ?