Creating Halloween Party Atmosphere

Have you ever been to a party where everyone is a little too polite and not really having fun? Odds are that the atmosphere for the party wasn't quite right. I mean, who wants to dance when the lighting is so bright and florescent that you don't know if you are at a party or visiting the dentist?
More than most any other type of party, Halloween especially needs a great mood to be set. People are dressed in ridiculous costumes, ready to let their inhibitions go, and as a host or hostess, you need to encourage the wild side of your guests.

Setting the Halloween mood requires three things - lighting, decorations, and sound.

LIGHTING:
This is the most important element of your Halloween scene-setting. No one wants bright lighting at a Halloween Party. Let me repeat: NO ONE WANTS BRIGHT LIGHTING AT A HALLOWEEN PARTY. So, how do you create a spooky mood while still ensuring that your guests can see their way to the food table?

• Gels - Theatrical gels can be found on Ebay from various vendors. They are pieces of thin, colored plastic that don't melt even when touching hot electric lights. I would recommend getting a few green ones and a few red ones and putting them over any light bulbs in your home. They will still let enough light through, but will cast a dramatic colored light in the party rooms. Maybe do green if you are recreating a bat cave, or use red for a freaky glow in the kitchen. Red light is actually really disturbing and makes people think about danger (or in Amsterdam, prostitutes), so it's perfect for Halloween.
• Candles - Be careful, because drunk guests + fire is not always the best equation. But candles placed in a low-traffic area create an unparalled ambience. If those candles are placed inside a creepy jack o' lantern, even better!
• Colored lightbulbs - These are great because they are easy to find in any home improvement store. Colored bulbs come in CFL now, which are much better because they don't get so deadly hot to the touch, use less energy, and especially the black lights create a brighter effect.
• Turn off the overhead lights - Even if you don't want crazy colored lighting at your party, turning on some lamps instead of the super bright overhead lights will create a cozier atmosphere.

Warnings - Don't put colored cloth over a hot light and don't try to paint lightbulbs. It could start a fire, and then your party would suck. Also, make sure there is sufficient lighting on stairways for safety.
DECORATIONS - You can make fun decorations for free or at least buy them pretty inexpensively. I'll do a post later this week on homemade deocrations. Decorations are a must at Halloween! Seriously, why even throw a Halloween party if you don't want to make your house spooky?
I like to do each room as a different theme. For example - arachnid living room, batroom or bloody Psycho scene in the bathroom, Zombie-attack food room, skeletons in the closet, kitchen = witch's potion room. Some people who throw Halloween parties have a whole house theme that is different every year. You can get great ideas at the Halloween Forum website. Your guests will be expecting alot from the decorations if they are invited to a Halloween party at your place - so don't disappoint!
There are a couple things to keep in mind when decorating your place for Halloween:

1. What age guests are you expecting? There are many levels of Halloween decor from "Autumn Festive" to "Terror Town". If this is a party for five year olds, let's stay on the tame end of the spectrum. No skeletons in electric chairs for the young 'uns, okay? However, if you have all ages, you might choose to make the basement or backyard really terrifying for the older guests, and keep other areas just a little spooky.
2. How overboard do you want to go with this? You can choose a couple rooms to decorate, and leave the rest normal. Saves time and money, and keeps guests out of the boring rooms (fewer rooms to clean later - bonus!) And, if your party this year rocks, people will want you to throw a party next year, so don't blow all your great ideas at once.
3. BORROW decorations from other people. Why buy or make a million things that you will just have to store in your garage? So many people have had a big party in the past, and would be happy to let you borrow their stuff. Ask around! (Don't ask people that you don't plan to invite - that's rude! "Dude, can I borrow your homemade coffin for my awesome party? But you can't come. I think it's creepy that you have a coffin and I don't want my friends to know that I know you.")

SOUND: Okay, so there are sound effects, Halloween theme music (think "Thriller" or "Devil Went Down to Georgia"), and regular party music. Sound effects are cool to put on the front porch or in your haunted basement, but nobody wants to stand around the punch bowl for three hours listening to nothing but ghost moans and witch cackling. Ummm...no. Just no. Halloween theme music is a good idea. Everyone REALLY, REALLY wants to hear Thriller on Halloween. But they only want to hear it once. If you have 15 songs on a Halloween mix tape, you can't just put it on repeat for the whole night. People will leave your party after the third time through. I'd suggest playing your mix once at the beginning of the party, and once at the tail end of the party, with regular party music in between. Or even better, create a three hour mix with regular songs (lemme put in a request for some 80's music!) and Halloween songs mixed together.
Have any more ideas about creating Halloween atmosphere? Post them in the comments!

Halloween Invitations

I'm not knocking Evite - it's convenient! cute graphics! I have a head count! - but there is something about Evite that feels a little forced. Sometimes when a friend sends me an Evite, I'll sit for ten minutes trying to think of an unoffensive excuse to put next to my name in the "Not attending" column (when the real reason is that I can see that your stupid co-worker Travis just RSVPed and spending a night listening to him tell off-color jokes is my personal version of hell.)

Generally, if I'm taking the time and spending the money to have a legendary shin-dig, I want the invitation to reflect that. If it's something less legendary, like a backyard BYOB party, I'll buy some hot dogs and send an Evite. If you are planning a fancy, high-budget affair such as a wedding, there are whole books of etiquette about the invitations you'll need, and I'm not getting into all that now.

The next party I'm hosting is the best of all theme parties - HALLOWEEN!! We are expecting 45 people from multiple circles of friends. This is our second annual Halloween party and the pressure is on to make it even better than last year's event (which was SUPER FUN, especially considering that we were first-timers who didn't have many decorations yet!)

Invites needed to go out to 60 people or so. Personally, I would rather spend my party budget on better booze instead of stamps. So we did the ecological, economical thing and created a PDF invitation to email to our friends.

PROS to the E-MAILED PDF/JPEG:

• You can also print the PDF and hang it up at work, eliminating the awkward "co-worker party" email, or pass out a flyer to your neighbors.

• It's cooler and more memorable than just typing a few lines of text in an email or text message.


• The invitation will continued to be formatted that way you want, even if friends forward it to other people.


• Design will give the guests a clue about what to expect at the party.
  

Below are my invitations from this year's and last year's parties. They were both designed in Adobe Illustrator (with some Photoshop for good measure). You can also use a program like Microsoft Publisher to create similar effects. We found some inspiration by doing an Image search on Google.

Our party will be a Thriller!

We were in the middle of watching Season 1 of Dexter when we designed this one.

Pudding Shots

 Thank you to my dear friend Julie who introduced me to pudding shots! I'm going to make a bold claim here - Pudding shots are the new Jello shot. If these have not made an appearance at any of your friends' parties yet, then prepare to become an instant hero among your group. These are imperative for any Girls' Weekend or Bachelorette Party. They are also going to be amazing at my upcoming Halloween Party.

Pudding shots are creamy little alcohol-infused spoonfuls of HEAVEN. They are great for you, the hostess, because you can make them a week ahead of time and freeze them. There are a million flavor variations to suit your party and your tastes.

Here is the basic recipe:

1 small box of INSTANT chocolate pudding

3/4 C Milk (skim works fine)

1/4 C Vodka

1/2 C Bailey's Irish cream

8 oz Extra Creamy Cool Whip

Mix the pudding mix with the milk with an electric mixer. Then add the booze and mix. Then add the cool whip and mix. Put into small cups and freeze. Serve with little spoons. Makes 24 2oz. servings.

Variations:

• White Chocolate instant pudding mix with Kahlua instead of Bailey's. (Use slightly less than 1/2 Cup or it will taste too boozy.)
• Turtle instant pudding mix (they only carry this flavor around X-mas, so stock up when you see it!) with Caramel Bailey's.
• Chocolate instant pudding mix with Mint Bailey's or peppermint schnapps.
• French Vanilla instant pudding mix with 1/3 C Amaretto instead of the Bailey's.
• I haven't tried this one yet, but imagine that Banana instant pudding mix and Brandy or Rum would be divine. If someone tries this combo, let me know how it turns out!
  

HOSTESS TIPS:

1. You can get 2 oz plastic cups with lids at GFS or other restaurant supply stores. I know GFS has mini spoons, too. The lids are key because then you can stack the shots in your freezer.
2. If you have a hard time getting the pudding shot mix into the little cups, you might try putting the pudding shot mix into a large plastic bag and cutting off the corner of the bag, thus creating a way to "pipe" the mix into the little cups. Personally, I did okay just scooping the pudding shot mix with a measuring cup and dripping it into the little cups.
3. Top the shot with a little dollop of whipped cream for extra flair.