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!

Not So Scary Halloween Celebration Ideas

People of all ages love Halloween! While gruesome, scary décor and party themes are fun for older kids and adults, young children (and some fearful grown-ups) are often genuinely creeped out by frightening decorations. If this is you, take heart (but not literally), here are a number of not so scary Halloween celebration ideas:

Halloween Party Decorations-Outdoor and Indoor
Amazing outdoor and indoor Halloween decorations are readily available, even if you are catering to the lighter side of Halloween.

Outdoor
Start by placing a giant 3D lighted Jack O’Lantern on your front porch, or near your front door. Then hang a lighted spider web on your door or on your house. Dress up your steel garage door with the fun stix Halloween magnetic decorations, and stick the happy jack window wall graphic in your front window for added dimension to your outdoor decor. Stay outdoors or move to indoor decorating with personalized Halloween banners. Several suggestions for cute banners are: the personalized Halloween family banner, the candy corn personalized banner, trick or treaters banner, or the pumpkin personalized banner.

Indoor
Hang fun, colorful decorations from the ceiling at different heights. The fall fluffy hanging decorations are a great choice, especially in combination with the gruesome group hanging decorations. Then attach a mixture of decorations on your walls. In your entryway, the happy Halloween wall graphic with your family name on it is a welcoming sign to guests that this is a friendly Halloween celebration. Continue filling the walls with Halloween cheer as you put up the gruesome group glitter cutouts and the ghost felt cutout assortment. In the main party area, the stack o’Jack-O-Lanterns is a crazy and silly addition to the non-scary atmosphere.

Balloons
Halloween balloons are a friendly way to incorporate a light-hearted tone to your party setting. Group a bunch of black and orange polka dot latex balloons with some of these adorable mylar balloon choices: the black cat, the kooky bat, the giant witch hat, the haunted (or not so haunted) house, and the happy ghost. Don’t forget to have a helium tank at the ready to fill all of your balloons!

Halloween Party Activities
Capture the costumed guests by taking lots of photos! Provide exciting Halloween photo props and photo stand ins for the guests to indulge in a variety of poses.
Photo Props: Frankenstein, Scarecrow, or Witch
Photo Stand-Ins: Scarecrow, Mummy, Juggling Skeleton Child, or Pirate Photo Setting

Set up popular Halloween activities like the classic bobbing for apples, the pumpkin toss game, the inflatable pumpkin ball toss game, and the inflatable spider ring toss game.

Three adorable Halloween craft ideas are: assemble the Foamies candy corn bucket, put together the make a scarecrow craft kit, or paint the large paintable pumpkin.

Remember, when you want to please the crowd, you can’t go wrong with a Halloween pinata full of candy and other fun filler items!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Halloween Classroom Party Games & Activities

Halloween is right around the corner, don’t be left in the dark for your classroom party, bring into play these fun Halloween classroom party games and activities:

Fill the Pumpkin Game
Place a pumpkin Halloween candy bucket about 4-6 feet away from the students. In a large plastic Halloween bowl, provide several pieces of party candy, preferably all of the same kind, like Tootsie Rolls or Frooties. Line the students up behind a tape line and give them each a time allotted turn (suggestion: 20-30 seconds) tossing candy, piece by piece into the bucket. After each turn, count how many pieces each student was able to get into the bucket and keep a tally to see which student(s) got the most candy in the bucket. A variation on this game is to break up the classroom into two teams and run the same game, only do the count at the very end to see which team got the most candy in their bucket.

Ghost Busters Game
Cut 30-50 ghosts, about 5-6 inches tall, out of white construction paper. Give the ghosts faces with a black sharpie marker on one side. Turn each ghost to the blank side and assign each ghost a point value (1, 5, 10, 20, etc.) with a pen or highlighter. Assign point values based on age appropriate math numbers. For older kids use larger numbers to make the game more exciting. Hide the ghosts around the room while the students are gone or if they will be supervised, have them step out into the hallway so you can hide the ghosts. Let the students back in the classroom and then instruct them to be ghost busters and find as many ghosts as they can before you yell “boo!” When the game is over, have the students add up the numbers on their ghosts to see who had the most points. Give the winners a thrill with cool glow in the dark fangs as their prize.

Halloween Toss Games
Who can resist a game of bean bag toss, especially with a Halloween themed board? Your students will love lining up for the monster lab toss game or the Halloween bean bag toss game. Both of these games feature a colorful Halloween theme, and include point values on the board. Tally up the points each student gets after their turn is completed.

Bat Pinata Activity
A crowd pleasing Halloween party activity is the classic and beloved piñata. Let the students take a whack with a piñata buster at this crazy looking bat piñata. You can never go wrong the piñata filler, packed with yummy treats and fun toys. If you are looking for an alternative idea, fill the piñata with fun erasers, stickers, or coupons/bucks for special classroom perks.

Host a Halloween Ball – Ghoulish Ideas

Calling all ghouls, ghosts, and goblins to a grossly gruesome gathering! Royalty are not the only ones who want to go to the Ball, host a Halloween Ball. Create a creepy atmosphere with a variety of different types of Halloween party supplies to transform your home or party space into a ghastly Halloween bash.

Outdoor Halloween Décor
Start the Halloween haunting in the front yard with an assortment of outdoor Halloween decorations! Beckon the spooks with an eerie graveyard kit. Be sure to strategically place a personalized tombstone yard sign in the graveyard to declare that the guests have arrived dead on at the ghoulish get-together. Cover up front windows with plastic window scenes, window posters (Sinister Sid and Grim Reaper), and freak out your creepy guests with a motion detection haunted house 666 sign that spins the third number from a 9 to a 6, while it plays thunder and lightning sounds. Post a tattered “Enter at your own Risk” banner over the front door for an additional outdoor accent.

Indoor Halloween Décor
Put a spooky touch on every room that the Halloween Ball guests are going to haunt with fantastic Halloween party décor. In the “ball room”, deck out the ceiling with orange and black twirly whirlys, and give additional light to the room by adding a few Halloween LED lanterns. In the middle of the space, hang a spider web canopy to create a creepy chandelier look. This freaky decoration has gnarly posable legs and eyes that light up. To convert walls to match your Halloween décor, cover them with black gossamer fabric.The gothic mansion scene setter portraits are perfect for a main hallway or a large open wall. In the lavatory, give your guests a fright with the zombie hand peel’n place toilet topper. This vinyl low stick adhesive decoration looks like a zombie hand is reaching out of the toilet bowl filled with blood. You can even decorate the refrigerator with a disgusting Halloween refrigerator door cover. The cover features a freezer panel with a frozen head and assorted parts. The refrigerator panel pictures a mixture of unsavory decaying food, worms, and various specimens.

Halloween Tableware
Cover all of the tables with black gossamer and an overlay of spider web patterned gossamer. Place a haunted house glitter centerpiece in the middle of the tables, surrounded by dreary glitter leaf table sprinkles. The scary silhouettes dinner plates, napkins, and cups are a great Halloween tableware choice for your party. At the serving table, attach a bloody gauze panel to the top of the black gossamer, and then position a black tabletop Halloween tree as the centerpiece.

For a real thrill, put the meat market value pack of bloody body parts on a platter with a cover. Have guests touch the items without seeing them, and then try to guess what they are touching. Be sure to play fun music and include songs like the Monster Mash. Let your ghoulish creativity rise and be brought forth from your inner being!