Five Alternative Themes for Parties at Halloween

Traditional Halloween parties seem to all go the same way. There’s bobbing for apples, drinking cider, jack-o-lanterns adorning every table and lots and lots of orange and black. Been there, done that. Try something different this year for your Halloween celebration and have an alternative Halloween party your guests will be talking about for years to come!

Celebrity Party
Whether it’s Lady Gaga or Michael Jordan, everyone has a favorite celebrity they would love to be if even just for a day. Help your guest’s dreams come true by having a celebrity-themed Halloween party! Roll out the red carpet for your guests as they arrive, and be sure to take lots of pictures in true paparazzi style. Have elegant hours devours prepared, popular music and be sure to give away Hollywood awards for the best celebrity look-alikes. This theme can be done with adults and/or children and is especially good for the party host who wants to steer clear of anything scary for their Halloween party.

Vampire Party
There’s no doubt that vampires have reached insane levels of popularity over the past couple of years, and Halloween is the perfect time to throw a vampire party- no humans allowed! Make sure your guests grab their white vampire fangs and prepare for a night of fun with fellow vampires. Set the mood with organ music or have your favorite vampire movie playing. Send your guests home with candies covered in Halloween favor wrappers they won’t find anywhere else! Depending on how much you get into the vampire and blood theme, this party is still probably best for adults only.

Halloween Hoedown
Not everyone is into the spook and gore of Halloween, so why not throw a non-threatening Halloween Hoedown? Greet your cowboy-hat and boot-wearing guests at a barn entrance  and direct them to the fun inside. Play your favorite country music and leave plenty of room for line dancing. Guests old and young will get a kick out of glass boot mugs they can take home to remember the party throughout the year. This non-threatening Halloween theme will leave your guests feeling light-hearted instead of spooked out.

Decade Party
Hulahoop back to the 50’s. Flashback to the 80’s. Take your Halloween guests to a decade they haven’t visited in years. The key to this party is your groovy music CD.  Play favorite songs from your chosen decade and watch your guests reminisce about old times. Have friends and family bring pictures of themselves from past decades and put them into a box as they arrive. Display the pictures and see if your guests can pick each other out from the wall of photos. Your peace sign danglers fit any retro party and leave your guests feeling like they’ve gone back in time.

Wild about Halloween
Unleash your inner animal at a safari-themed Halloween party. Guests of all ages can dress as their favorite animal, or make things really interesting by telling people what animal they have to dress up as! Decorate your venue with animal print party balloons and literally make everything – from the invitations to the giraffe print cups – in the animal print of choice. Play a game of animal charades and watch your guests fall over in laughter as they watch each other imitate wild animals.

Let your October imagination run wild with unique, Halloween theme parties!

Adorable Halloween Favor Ideas

Having a Halloween party? Stumped as to what to give your guests as a parting gift? Check out these outstanding, adorable Halloween favor ideas:

Sweet Treats
Trick or treat? Most people opt for treat over trick and for good reason. One of the best things about Halloween is the treats and your guests will love these sweet treats along with their adorable packaging!
•Halloween Cookie Tins – Send your guests away with a homemade treat in a personalized cookie tin as a keepsake from your Halloween party.
• Halloween Mint Tins – Choose a design and give this minty take home favor with your own wording on the tin.
• Halloween Lollipop Favors – Hand your guests a bouquet of Halloween lollipops and they are sure to treat you with a smile! Choose from a variety of Halloween milk chocolate lollipop favors, boo-tique swirl lollipops, or Halloween swirl lollipops.
• Red and white wax fangs – These amazing wax candy lips come in a box with 24 individual packages to easily include in your Halloween favor pack.

Glow Favors
Your guests will play with these glow party favors long after the Halloween party is over.
• Glow in the Dark Fangs – Make your teeth glow green with these fun party favor fangs!
• Glow Pumpkin Saucers – Play with this adorable pumpkin glow in the dark saucer long after the sun goes down.
• Glow in the Dark Sword – These cool light-up swords come in a variety of colors (yellow, orange, blue, and green) and they are a fantastic Halloween accessory.
• Flash Pop Ring – Bring in the bling with these flashy rings!
• Magic Star Ball – These star glow favors are irresistible and they come with an attachment to turn them into a necklace!

Novelty Items
Candy is not the only coveted party favor that your guests will go crazy for! These novelty items will make them howl with happiness.
• Creature Pop Up Favors – Kids will love playing with these delightful monster pop ups over and over again.
• Bean Bag Bats – Maybe you don’t think bats are cute, but these bean bag bats in assorted colors are adorable.
• Pull And Stretch Bounce Ball – These bouncy balls are unique! Not only do they bounce, but they take on different shapes as you pull and stretch them. They come in bright colors (blue, pink, green, and orange).
• Sponge Bob Sculpted Bubbles – Bubbles are a guest favorite, and the Sponge Bob bubble container is so cute and comical!

Contain Your Favors
Wondering what kind of container to put your Halloween party favors in?
• Halloween Favor Boxes – Choose from 5 terrific Halloween designed boxes to contain your goodies.
• Bat Shaped Favor Bags with Zipper – These happy bat bags feature a zipper closure to keep the favors from spilling out.
• Cauldron – Stir up great small prizes and Halloween candy in this black kettle cauldron.

Personalize Your Home & Brew

Create a signature event (almost literally!) of an Oktoberfest bash, Halloween haunting, homemade autumn brew and more with personalized products from Shindigz.com.

Personalized Fall Party Supplies
Fall events call for beautifully photographed country backdrops like our autumn photo background illustration or the Fence in the Fall backdrop from Fall Party Supplies. These gorgeous backgrounds come in six different sizes. Imagine one behind a head banquet table and for photo op possibilities. You can use them outdoors if you order vinyl versions.

Add up to three lines of text to a backdrop — or none at all! Coordinate it with personalized fall banners for advertising your autumn event, and party favors in sweet candy corn designs.

Be sure to pick up a few sets of handy banner bungee cords for securing backdrops, banners, or anything else sporting grommets.

Personalized Halloween Party Supplies
If you can give a pretty sure estimate of how many neighbors will show up on your doorstep on Halloween, why not kick up the trick-or-treat scene a notch or two? Toss personalized Halloween party favors such as candy bars or lollipops into their bags, or pick out Halloween favor boxes to customize with a neighborly Halloween greeting. You can fill the boxes with edibles and other treats such as stickers, magnets and decals.

Speaking of greetings, welcome the little goblins to your home on the big night with a Halloween yard sign or made-to-order, personalized Halloween tombstones.

Personalized Oktoberfest Party Supplies
Oktoberfest celebrations typically showcase Bavarian food and drink, so if this is true of yours, take a look at the brat-, beer- and pretzel-embellished Germanfest entrance arch. A colorful, amusing entrance for Oktoberfest guests, the arch is topped with a sign that looks like an accordion and has three lines of room for your special Oktoberfest message. Hand beer steins to arriving guests underneath the arch and snap photos of them to share on Facebook afterward.

Personalized tableware items are naturals in this setting. Personalize beverage labels, coasters, travel mugs and beer mugs – including our very popular LED mug.

Consider custom beverage and dinner napkins for Oktoberfest, too. Just select the type of imprint you want (metallic, holographic, etc.) for your custom napkins, add an order to the cart and customize by adding your wording and choosing an Oktoberfest graphic. Just remember to keep the contrast high (i.e., dark napkin with light imprint or vice-versa) for the best results.

Personalized Home Brews
We know a hobby wine maker who always bottles up a batch of a special red he calls “Witches’ Brew.” If you’re an at-home vintner, brew master or autumn bottler of Swedish glögg, come browse our bottle labels to find customizable labels for your home brews to match most any theme or occasion.

Awful Graduation Gifts for Teachers & Classmates

The final few months of the last year of high school can result in heavy-duty nostalgia, senioritis, or some combination of the two maladies reminiscent of the alternating chills and fever of a bout of flu!

Graduation and exciting next steps in life will eventually provide the cure. In the meantime, try some soothing relief with a dose of humor by giving outrageous gag graduation gifts to fave teachers and classmates from the Halloween party supplies store.

For starters, take a gander at the gory brain mold. This is obviously a great gag grad gift for a phenomenal biology or psychology teacher, but also for any teachers with whom you can joke about having given difficult or lengthy assignments that you can say “turned my brain into mush.”

Use the gory brain mold, a little something from our bag o’ bones (“worked my fingers to the bone”) and one of our link chains (“chained to my desk with homework so I couldn’t go hang out”) as presentation items at parties and receptions honoring teachers, for a humorous touch. Start out your remarks with the humor, then work your way into more earnest expressions of sentiment and gratitude.

The gory brains are also unnaturally good mementos of any zombie events you’ve shared with classmates: zombie themes for spirit days, zombie walks, zombies vs. humans contests and so on. We highly recommend the Martha Stewart™ severed finger invitations, which somehow combine the creepy with the classy, for a zombie-themed graduation party. Also, the Spine-Thrilling Movie Themes CD provides both ambience and fiendishly clever party favors for this theme.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with these “awful” products. Think over the past year, and take your memories to Halloween party supplies for some needed comic relief in graduation gifts!