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!

Decorating for Halloween 2012

Decorations change with times and tastes, but the basics remain the same. Evaluate the room you’re decorating for size and setup, then select your pieces working from large Halloween decorations down to the accents. Be sure to incorporate Halloween party supplies that are new for 2012 as well as those that are just new boo to you!

Halloween Walls
Your choices in decorating walls range from fabrics to patterned papers to murals. Think about covering the wall that stands opposite the entrance, and placing free-standing Halloween decorations in front of it for depth. One setup we like this year is to hang a Cemetery Gates illustration in the largest size the wall (and your budget) allows, and placing a pair of zombie silhouettes or tombstones in front of it. Silhouettes work even in a smaller room – some might eat brains but never a lot of precious floor space! Experiment with different illustrations and silhouettes.

Halloween Entrances
Another spot for a large decoration is the main entrance. For 2012 we like a spider web door topper/entrance or a five-foot corex lighted skull from our collection of outdoor Halloween decorations. Keep in mind that just because something is tough enough to withstand October weather doesn’t mean it can’t be used indoors! Think about using them on the inside of the doorway so guests can enjoy them all evening long.

Halloween Centers
If your space is large enough, you’ll want a large decoration right in the center that everyone can see from anywhere in the room. This could be a chandelier or other large hanging decoration, a large free-standing decoration, or both. We really like trees for Halloween 2012 because there is such a wonderful selection of styles and materials, and sizes go all the way to the magnificent Spooky Balloon Tree from Halloween Props that is 8’X8’ when fully assembled.

You can incorporate trees into smaller spaces as well. Just choose skinnier trees, put them in corners or flank doorways with them.

Halloween Lighting
A Halloween party is one of the events where we usually are looking to provide subdued and/or flickering lighting. Find Halloween-themed lanterns, string lights and a darling lighted ghost (which would look terrific in a grouping with one of the above-mentioned trees) in Halloween Lights, but do visit Boo-tique for some imposing and deliciously creepy tabletop candelabra, too.

Halloween Finishes
Finish the rest of your walls and windows with cutouts, garland, or drapes of spider-patterned gossamer.

Try to incorporate little surprises into your decorating, such as customized bottle labels that coordinate with the décor, or radiant balloon lights (which cannot be seen in black balloons, but work fine with other colors of latex balloons).

Simple Halloween Party Snacks and Tableware

Getting ready for Halloween doesn’t have to be stressful. There are plenty of simple, low-maintenance ways to create tasty party snacks and eye-catching tableware.

Elegant
Halloween doesn’t have to be scary, and it can easily be made into a holiday with elegant style. Candle holders like  pumpkin lantern centerpieces jazz up orange or black tablecloths. Sprinkle candy corn around for edible decorations to add colorful snacks for hungry visitors. If candy corn won’t fix your craving for Halloween goodness, make cakes in mini pumpkins cake pans. Decorate with orange and green icing, and watch your table come to life.

Kid-Friendly

Create faces on party tableware!

Smiling jack-o-lanterns, happy spiders, laughing vampires- there are many kid-friendly snacks and tableware to keep the atmosphere light. A boo bash party pack can jazz up any boring table at Halloween. For the child with a sweet tooth, bake some sugar cookies in the shapes of pumpkins or candy corns and decorate with icing. For the child who wants something healthy, create an array of black and orange fruits and vegetables like carrots, blackberries, oranges, mangos and raisins. The combination of funny Halloween characters and kid-friendly snacks will create a simple spread that children of all ages will love!

Vampire Red
Orange and black not your thing? Spice up a spread with a simple Halloween vampire theme of red, black and white. Have your main centerpiece be a haunting, tabletop skull candle holder that looks like it was taken from Dracula’s dining room table. Any vampire fan will love sinking his or her teeth into cupcakes wrapped in vampire cupcake wrappers.  Don’t forget to choose some sort of red beverage to go along with the treats. There are lots of vampire goodies out at Halloween time that can serve as secondary table decorations, like plastic fangs and bats.

Bad to the Bone
The chills and frills party pack look is big in Hollywood and can be a real hit for your Halloween spread. Aside from fun, disposable cups, plates and napkins, there are lots of exciting table centerpieces like plastic or glass skulls.  If you’re interested in having your Halloween snacks fit in with the theme of the table, create brains oozing from skulls from nomskulls cupcake molds. It’s up to you how scary you want to get. Skulls can be a super spooky theme to a Halloween table spread or just a fun, colorful way to jazz up a table.

After you set your Halloween table, try these Halloween party recipes and enjoy the fun of pre-party preparations with family and friends.

Mini Pumpkins Cake Pan Arriving Soon

We are pleased to show you our new 3-D Mini Pumpkins Cake Pan, which will be ready to ship July 15! Each pan will bake 4 pumpkin tops and 4 bottoms at one time. When baked and cooled, “glue” tops and bottoms together with a thin layer of icing. Embellish these adorable pumpkins with green and orange icing and serve them by themselves or with spider cupcakes “hiding” among them!

The spiders are always a hit at parties but labor-intensive. We recommend recruiting help with decorating, or setting part of the batch aside for a simpler treatment.

Hairy Spider Cupcakes
yellow or chocolate cake mix
chocolate frosting
standard-sized marshmallows (not mini)
chocolate sprinkles
small round candies (e.g., cinnamon “red hot” type/size)
black whip licorice (if you need a substitute, try chocolate-dipped chow mein noodles or thin pretzel sticks)

Bake cupcakes according to package directions. While they are baking and/or cooling, trim licorice for legs and cut marshmallows in half for the spiders’ heads.

To assemble, spread a thin layer of frosting on the cut side of a marshmallow half. Place the marshmallow on the top of the cupcake near the edge, frosted side down, as the head. Frost the rest of the marshmallow and top of cupcake. Drop chocolate sprinkles all over, then place candies on the head as eyes. Poke pieces of licorice into the top, on either side of the head, as legs.

Nothing beats our Sweet Station-Halloween for displaying and serving your creations!

We hope you enjoy the new cake pan and the recipe! For more pumpkins, spiders and other ideas for your Halloween table, shop ShindigZ Party’s Halloween pages.