Plan a Halloween Themed Fundraiser

Do you have an October fundraising event? Work a Halloween theme and Halloween party decorations into your fall fundraiser this year. Bring something fresh to annual fairs and festivals with newer products such as personalized bottle labels, or try one of the more unusual fundraising ideas below.

Say Boo with Your Booth
For an indoor Halloween themed carnival fundraiser, check out the Radiant Halloween balloon arch from Halloween props. The arch helps you create a happy, festive entrance that is rated “E” for “Everyone.” As always with our Radiant arches, you have balloon color choices. If the fundraiser really must be geared more generally to fall, select candy corn or autumn leaf colors instead of orange and black.

For festival and tailgate fundraising, set up a fuss-free outdoor canopy. Be sure to weight the corners adequately to stand up to errant autumn breezes.

Hang a custom Halloween banner across the top of the canopy and sell bottles of blood-red soda with personalized Halloween bottle labels and matching Halloween candy bars.

Plot a Scavenger Scheme
A road rally is a scavenger hunt on wheels, and it is becoming a popular fundraising event. It’s a cute idea as a fundraiser for a transportation-related cause, such as a school bus trip or Meals on Wheels, and highly amenable to a Halloween theme party. Donations are collected as registration fees.

Just for fun, pick a theme with a mascot or conveyance that gets around: witches and brooms, vampires and bats, headless horsemen and jack-o-lanterns. Plant thematic Halloween party favors and props – especially wearables — on the scavenger list; and keep up the theme on snack tables for the gathering afterward.

Plan a Murder
This type of Halloween fundraiser can come formal or informal, costumed or not, but one thing is clear: Halloween adds an extra shiver to a murder mystery party.

Select a murder mystery kit from the many available online, and then come to Shindigz.com for the setting decorations. Whether your murder is committed in a 1920s Chicago speakeasy or at a fancy masked ball, you’ll find beautiful themed decorations and plenty of assistance.

Complete the look by outfitting the players in accessories and Create-A Costume pieces from Halloween Costumes.

Thrill the World
If you can plan a Halloween fundraiser for Halloween weekend 2011, consider a tie-in to Thrill the World, a global celebration of zombie unity and of Michael Jackson’s video, “Thriller,” expressed through dance. Visit Thrilltheworld.com for more information on the dance and to officially register your event.

Participating organizations are encouraged to use their events to support charities. Raise funds via “Thriller” dance workshops, costume contest entree fees, or a donations-at-the-door monster bash decorated with Halloween party supplies such as our smashing cemetery and zombie silhouettes and new Beware Zombie tableware.

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!

The Scariest Pirate Party

The runaway success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies has boosted the popularity not only of pirate parties in general, but also of haunted and undead zombie pirate parties for all but the youngest party people. Best of all, there’s absolutely no reason to wait until Halloween to throw a bash fit for the Bermuda triangle!

It’s easy to hunt haunted ships and multiply the fun by combining products from our pirate party store with selections from Halloween party supplies. Select a ship, palm trees, and treasure chest from our Treasure Bay or Pirate’s Cove kit. Then, think about the ways you can turn these pieces into an eerie and ominous setting using Halloween decorations and decorating techniques. Here are a few ideas:

Choose background materials in dark blues and grays to suggest nighttime, or a dreary underwater scene.

If using a Treasure Bay ship, cut and tear the ends of gossamer “sails” so they hang in tatters from the “masts.”

Backlight the large decorating pieces with red bulbs, and keep ambient lighting to the minimum required for safety.

Make use of a fog machine.

Dress up lifesize light up zombies (or lifesize grim reaper figures) in pirate wearables and weapons and hang or stand them in unexpected places.

Bring your dark blues to the table, too, along with the glint of pirate gold and silver. Start with a solid tablecover topped with tattered fishnet and a mix of gold and silver solid color tableware. Put together a centerpiece grouping of a nautical lantern lit with a flickering LED tea light, a glitter skull centerpiece outfitted with an eyepatch, and a scattering of plastic gold coins.

The skull and crossbones mylar balloon is big and sets the perfect tone immediately. Bedeck your deck by tying it outside to a pole or railing, or create tall, weighted bouquets of this balloon with black latex balloons to flank the entrance to your scary pirate party.

Decorations & Costumes for a Zombie Halloween

We can’t explain the enduring popularity of zombies, but we do know that creating a “Zombie Halloween” is dead simple if you shop for decorations and costumes at ShindigZ Party.

To start, select a great backdrop for the zombie terror-tory. A black-and-white photo mural such as the Cemetery Gates photo illustration or the Misty Woods photo background will lend a classic Night of the Living Dead feel. They come in several different sizes and materials to suit your setting, and can even be personalized with your wording. Another way to go is to backlight one of our extra-large free-standing silhouette pieces such as our Graveyard or Crypt. (The Crypt Silhouette, incidentally, is made of weather resistant Corex and can be used outdoors, too.)

Highlight the entrance to the party or other haunted scene using the Graveyard Gates cemetery arch or the Spooktacular Cemetery Kit. If you’d like to build a pathway to or through the entrance, we highly recommend using the Cobblestone Patterned Flat Paper, which comes in shades of gray or tan, for this purpose.

Scatter a few personalized Halloween tombstones and our Zombie Silhouettes through your setting. Then garnish your creation with tattered lengths of black crepe streamers – hung poorly! – and a couple of cobwebs.

Lastly, shop our Gothic Costumes catalog for a great undead look at any age, and you’ll be well on your way to Zombieland!