Last week we received the cutest Halloween party invitation in the mail. (Yes, I mean snail mail.) I just love receiving invitations the old fashioned way – much better than an evite. I mean look at the attention to detail… a pumpkin stamp and skeleton washi tape on the envelope?! #love
It got me thinking back to a few years ago when I hosted a spooktacular Halloween party at my house. You should know that I’m kind of obsessed with themed parties… in my opinion every event should follow some sort of theme. It can be as basic as focusing on a color scheme to going all out with a clear theme in mind. Regardless of how thematic your party is, continuity in your event is key and will make it even more of a success. Attention is all in the details.
Please note that the photos in this post were definitely not taken with blogging in mind.
My sweet husband bought me flowers the week before our Halloween party. I decided to keep them after they died for extra eerie décor. I honestly can’t remember where I purchased the creepy skeleton from, but if I had to guess it was either Target or Party City. The tray aka grave is from West Elm.
I found these disturbing rat decals at Target and placed them all over our staircase. I can’t even tell you how many times I forgot I put these up and scared the shit out of myself. Hahaha. #truelife
A really easy way to spook up your decor is to just nudge your existing pictures or art on the walls and add cobwebs. This instantly makes your home feel haunted. (Ignore our ugly bathroom… this was before we updated it.)
Carve pumpkins!! Don’t do this too far in advance though. Pumpkins rot quickly. My husband was so proud of his “Scream” pumpkin design. But I mean, come on… his is NOTHING compared to my day of the dead skull. Funny story. Chris and I did this for a date night activity. However, our gym was holding a pumpkin carving contest. All you had to do was bring your pumpkin to the gym by a certain date. That “date” was the night we decided to carve and our gym closes at 11 pm. It should be noted that my pumpkin took hours to carve. Lol! I ran my pumpkin over to the gym at like 10:50 pm. Not even kidding. Hahaha. It was worth it though because I won the contest and got a $100 gift certificate out of it. Boom.
Ok, back to décor…
How cute are these labels?! Obviously, these are just your standard mixers (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Ginger Ale, etc), but changing their label is much more fun. I think these were a Party City find.
In this photo you can see I added cobwebs all over the bar as well as some spiders and bats. I purchased orange and black solo cups and alternated them in stacks to make sure people grabbed both colors. I couldn’t resist buying vodka in a glass skull. It was definitely overpriced, but whatever. It’s cool and I still have it on our bar.
I am still obsessed with these ghost cupcakes. I bought a Halloween Funfetti cake mix, orange and black cupcake liners, and Wilton eyeballs all from Target. You literally just swirl the frosting upwards to make the ghost and stick the eyeballs on. So easy. A few of the ghosts are on these cute spider leg cupcake holders that I received that night for a hostess gift. I believe they were from Pottery Barn or Williams Sonoma.
No Halloween party is complete without candy. The bucket on the left is a find from CVS. My husband brought it home one night laughing his butt off because it has a hand that grabs yours as you take a piece of candy! So ridiculous.
This was fun… haha. I simply carved a pumpkin and then used hummus as the “vomit”. Pretty disgusting looking but it is a guaranteed hit. Everyone at my party loved it! Pita chips were placed on the left and tortilla chips on the right.
Mummy dogs! And no, there were no children at this party. I just love hot dogs that much to serve them as mummies. Another super easy thing to make… I just used crescent rolls, hot dogs, and mustard. Flatten out the dough of the crescent rolls and use a pizza cutter to cut thin strips. Wrap the strips around the dogs leaving room for the eyes. Bake according to the crescent roll package and then use mustard to make eyes. I think I also had ramekins of ketchup and mustard for dipping sauces.
I found these containers of cheese puffs at Target. I mainly bought them because they were cheap and stuck within the theme. I will say, I was definitely surprised at how many people consumed these. Turned out to be a great purchase.
Don’t forget to put together a playlist with songs that every ghost, goblin, and witch will want to dance to!
If you still need a costume, check out my blog post on Halloween Costume Ideas.
XO, Lauren
