Celebrate Halloween with a night of fright. Pick and choose from the following ideas, or use them all, to create your own haunted house party.
Mound earth to look like newly dug graves and set out a few of these tombstones for a deathly welcome. The tombstones were carefully constructed out of polystyrene insulation. To ensure an easy cleanup, pile the dirt from the "fresh graves" onto a black plastic drop cloth.
These spooky, dual-purpose Halloween invitations remind guests to save the date and later act as a treat bag for their party favors.
Make sure guests know that the backyard isn't safe either. With the help of some tattered cloth, you can transform pumpkins into fearsome ghosts that arise from an ancient graveyard on All Hallows Eve.
Surround your table with moth-eaten curtains to set an eerie mood.
Add fireproofed curtains, clusters of candles, and police tape to cordon off the stairs to the private rooms of the house.
Place mirrors with eyes throughout your home to give an instant scare.
Place plain candlesticks in critter-covered cobwebs around your house. Cut a length of cheesecloth, and gently pull to make it look tattered. Drape cloth over candlesticks and mantel; add plastic spiders and leaves. Top candlesticks with bobeches -- collars that catch drips -- and insert tapers.
Use a side table to hold the work of a mad scientist. Fill a few glass vessels more than halfway with colored water (mix 3 drops green or 1/2 drop red food coloring in water; add a few tablespoons milk for murkiness). Peel off outer layers of a cabbage head for a brain specimen; use a fennel bulb with the fronds cut off for a heart.
If a specimen is too large for the jar's opening, cut it in half and stick it back together with skewers once it's inside. With a glue stick, attach a printed or written label on the container.
Make this shadowy centerpiece, and watch diners quickly discover they aren't the only guests at the table.
Make a drink table your party guests will dread. Place a punch bowl of sparkling sangria beside a mysteriously smoldering cauldron and drape a mirror with cheesecloth.
Treat (or trick) guests to a ghoulish spread at your spooky party. Start with astonishing appetizers like devilish eggs and guacamoldy, and finish the meal with sweet bones and graveyard cake.
Let your ghoulish guests choose from an array of sickly sweets, including shrunken pears.
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