Plan a Pumpkin Carving Party

Oh, October.  It’s such an animated time of year with bustling ideas, parties, and fun.  Childhood-like energy vivaciously radiates through joyful smiles.  Adults passionately reminisce their childhood days as they blissfully entice little ghosts and goblins with both tricks and treats.  Pumpkins and scarecrows eagerly collect their sweet treats with spooky smirks. Everyone – young and young at heart, finds enjoyment in the frightening fun of happy hauntings and petrifying parties!

Host a Pumpkin Carving Party!

October is adorned with straw, warm colored mums, gourds, and pumpkins. What better way to decorate your haunted house than with a pumpkin, perfectly carved out by your munchkin. Watch the faces of your favorite little ghouls light up with excitement when they come to your pumpkin carving party!

Get as creepily creative as you’d like!

Carve Out Your Invites:

When planning a pumpkin carving party, it is important to set the date to your evening of thrills.

• Consider a night when the weather is not too brisk, you’ll likely want to host the fun in your garage for easy clean up, and you’ll avoid the hands of your little ones getting too cold while they are playing in the pumpkin goo. The weather may be unavoidable in the event you want to show off your creativity at Halloween; pumpkins don’t last long once they’ve been carved.
• Purchase and prepare your Halloween party invites with details. Don’t forget to include RSVP information; you’ll need it to prepare your party.
• Send out your party invites to all of your guest goblins.

Planning For Your Party:

Give your little werewolf something to howl about!

After your guest goblins have returned their RSVPs, it is time to prepare for your party.

• Stop by your local Farmer’s Market and purchase one carving-size pumpkin for each of your guests. You may want to have a couple extra on hand, too. If you don’t use them at the party, you can always place them out to embellish your home during the holidays.
•  Pick up some pumpkin carving kits – remember to have enough carving utensils on hand for each of your guests.
• Decorate your garage into a Halloween scene with fun room transformers such as Jack O Lantern Scene Setters or Pumpkin Paper Lanterns.  Let your creativity be your guide!
• Add some fun to the party and lay out some pumpkin shaped goodie bags for the guest goblins.  Include nose glasses and Halloween party favors.
• Jazz up your party with some eerie edibles – try your bones at making a pumpkin cake (you can add some fun with an iridescent Jack O Lantern pan). Remember your Halloween themed plates, napkins, tableware, and plastic ware if you will have edibles.
• Let your heart go wild; just don’t let the vampires in!

Your Pumpkin Carving Party:

• For easy clean up, lay a large tarp down on your garage floor. When the evening is over, you will have less gooey pumpkin guts to worry about.
• Consider decorating a corner of the garage with little hay stacks and straw or potting plants of mums. Place the pumpkins in a pile to create a pumpkin patch. Let the kids have fun picking their favorite pumpkin.
• You may even want to set the mood of the party by playing a Halloween CD.
• Let your guests have a gooey good time carving their pumpkin!

After your little goblin guests have finished with their spooky carving fun, let them take their personalized pumpkin home as a party favor. You will likely be the hit of Halloween!

Happy Haunting!

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!

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.

Props & Sets for Phantom of the Opera

There have been a number of stage and screen incarnations of Phantom of the Opera since the initial publication of the novel. One of our favorites (besides the 1925 Lon Chaney horror film, natch) is the visual feast served up in the 2004 movie based on the Broadway musical. For events with this fresh yet classic theme, Shindigz party decorations can help you replicate the luxe feel and romance of Phantom for a stage play, Mardi Gras masquerade or Phantabulous fundraiser.

For nearly all Phantom intents and purposes, we recommend pieces from the Music of the Night theme kit, shown at right. This kit features a tall gated entry arch and columns that evoke Gilded Age edifices along with a freestanding pipe organ prop of show-stopping size and design.

Suggest a hint of the cold subterranean chambers below, if you like, by covering walls or stage background with a flagstone-patterned flat paper or a stone wall dungeon backdrop from Halloween decorations (in fact, for a truly macabre take on this theme, you might use wall torches and other add-ons for a version of the torture chamber described in the novel).

Add drapes of reddest gossamer, leaving peeks here and there of the “stone” if you are using it, and cover tables with the same fabric. Then, go for the gold with glittering 3-tiered chandeliers, tableware, chair sashes and as many of our Music of the Night gold pillar candle props as you dare.

Trim the Night candles to various heights for centerpiece trios and for groupings on serving tables, pedestals and floor. Don’t be shy about mixing the props with candelabra, single tapers and other pillars to coax out maximum drama (for flame-free zones, select models from our LED candles collection!).

Invitations, banners and other customized printing for your Phantom event are quick and easy when you shop the Mardi Gras party supplies store. Of course you can match the distinctive mask of the Music of the Night promotional banners with Custom Creation invitations and tickets, but we also like the colorful Masks & Swirls design for this theme or production so do take a peek at that one, too!