It’s everyone’s favourite spook-tacular season, and this means it’s the perfect time to decorate your house for the perfect Halloween house party. It goes without saying that fancy dress is absolutely compulsory, and the more effort you put in the better your event will be. No lack lustre cats or Mean Girls-esque lingerie with some sort of animal ears here please!
Start with a colour theme, covering your house with autumnal oranges and reds, focusing on the kitchen and living room. You can do this with balloons (light up ones are particularly great), seasonal bunting and posters, as well as some well-placed spooky masks.
Next up are drinks and snacks, which of course need to follow the theme. Some ideas may be putting some spooky name labels on drinks, use Cheetos as fingers, a drinks bowl of Cosmopolitan as blood, I think you get the idea. Keep these to one table to create a central social area at the party, and it won’t detract from the spookiness of the house.
Musically, it’s really up to you, but a good Halloween mix up would be a good blend of a typical house party playlist with the occasional seasonal and spoof spooky song coming in (This is Halloween, Monster Mash, Time Warp, Thriller – you know the ones!).
Now décor is essential, but we are students so let’s be honest we have tight budgets. So with that in mind, here are my top 5 suggestions for ‘House of Horrors’ decorations:
1. Pumpkins – not just a fun activity for you and your housemates to show off your artistic skills, or your lack of them, but they are also an absolute must when it comes to throwing a Halloween house party. I’d recommend lighting them and putting them outside just before the party starts, either on the front porch or in the back garden.
2. Masks – not only a great option for the quickly put together last minute costumes, but also great decorations to go on the doors and walls in the house to keep the spooky vibes going throughout the house.
3. Black paper and glitter pens – sounds like it’s for a 6 year old BUT this is a great and cheap way to make signs to toilets, for snacks and drinks, and possibly write terrible Halloween jokes for the drunken laughs later in the night.
4. Cotton wool – you can stretch this out and stick it around the house as fake spider webs, and to add to this make or buy some spiders and hang them up with string from the ceiling, which works especially well in doorways.
5. A photo booth – essential for any house party, but if you can grab some seasonal props it’s even better! You can buy a photo booth kit in most fancy dress or gift stores which usually contains some cardboard props as well as a frame, which leaves you with some amazing photos of everyone in their costumes.
If you are lucky enough to have a basement, you have the perfect spooky area to go all out on the house of horrors. Pretty much keep decorations the same as highlighted above, but if you have a spare speaker then you can just have creepy sounds/music playing down there, plus if you have room you can set up beer pong (with ping pong balls as eyes!) and the cobwebs that are probably already down there should make it spooky enough.
Sources:
http://karennorman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/enough-of-summer.html
http://mamiverse.com/18-halloween-craft-ideas-69360/7/
https://uk.pinterest.com/maivelin/haunted-house-halloween-ideas/
http://www.celebrations.com/c/read/diy-halloween-photo-booth
http://giphy.com/gifs/michael-jackson-dancing-dance-8efnmZW83vqXm
http://giphy.com/gifs/halloween-mean-girls-amanda-seyfried-da3ZttqzSavZe
https://lifeinbostonwordpresscom.wordpress.com/category/halloween-2015/