HAPPY HALLOWEEN

A Halloween Party can bring back great memories of when we were children and all we could think about was Halloween. Halloween meant getting to dress up in our favorite costumes and getting lots of candy.

Times have changed and many parents have opted for Halloween parties instead of trick-or-treating. Children still get to wear their favorite costumes while mom and dad know who they are with and that they are safe.

So feel free to plan a great Halloween party this season. Bring out the goblins, ghosts, costumes, and jack-o’-lanterns. Decorate your home into an authentic Haunted House and give your guests a scary good time.

• Stuffed unused costumes and place them on chair on your front terrace.

• Place scarecrows around the yard or party area.

• Rig a ghost on a pulley. Tie a wire from a tree to the house. As guests arrive move the pulley to scare your guests. (Choose beforehand which guests would find this fun and which ones would not enjoy this prank).

• Use a variety of small and large pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns to place around the outside of your home.

• Create a cemetery scene, spooky shadows, or a coffin.

INDOOR DECORATIONS

• Buy gauze and dye it with red and black food coloring. Let dry and place around chairs, hang from walls, or place on pictures.

• Use lots of candles and lanterns to decorate your home. (Place candles in a safe area to avoid any hazards and keep away from children. You may substitute small electrical bulbs).

• Buy different sized round Styrofoam or ping-pong balls and make eyeballs with red puff paint and black dots. Hang from ceiling on a string.

• Hang up spider webs and spiders brought from a novelty or party supply store.

• Witches hats, brooms, bats, ghosts, scary bugs and spiders always work well as decorations.

• Use black & silver balloons, tie to your mailbox or on chairs.

• Decorate the table with jack-o-lanterns and oranges spiked with cloves.

• Place rubber mice and frogs next to chairs, on party table, or inside punch bowl.

• Tie a bundle of cornstalks together and use as a centerpiece, surround them with small pumpkins or squash.

• Use colored string, thread or yarn to create webs in windows, ceiling corners or doorways.

PARTY FAVORS

• Vampire teeth. • Jack-o’-lanterns filled with candy. • Halloween pencils, notepads or stationary. • Ghost lollipops.

GAMES
• Bobbing for apples: Put red apples in a basin of water. Add one green (poison apple) and 6 red apples. Put a blindfold on each guest in turn. Hands behind back. The guest who bites from the poisoned apple (green) gets a booby prize.

• Web un-wind: Tangle up different colored yarn, up to 60 feet. Tie a prize to the end of each yarn. Give each guest a colored yarn. The first one to untangle their yarn is the winner. To add excitement, tangle up the yarn with the guests, have them untangle themselves.

• Put all the prizes into a monster’s lair. Use the back of several chairs and cover with a dark sheet. Have the guests crawl through it.

• Walk the plank in the dark.

• Mummy Wrap: Divide guests into groups of three. Give each group a roll of toilet paper. Two people from each group wrap the third person with the paper. Each mummy to finish gets inspected, takes a picture and then gets unwrapped. The group who finishes first is the winner.

ACTIVITIES
• Have a costume party.

• Give awards for the ugliest, scariest, craziest, cutest, most horrible, most original, etc.

• Have a pumpkin carving contest. Divide guests into groups. Have them carve a pumpkin. The group with the funniest, scariest, or silliest face is the winner. They can take it home as a prize.

• If the party is for adults, have a scary movie marathon. Rent horror movies at your local video store.

PARTY FOODS
• Serve “eyes” served from different shaped crackers and decorated with cream cheese. Place sliced olives, pimento strips, pineapple chunks or strips of bell pepper to simulate the eye.

• Open Ghost sandwiches: Spread slices of bread with cream cheese. Cut out ghost shapes, place raisins as eyes.

• Crunchy Bone Sandwiches: Use crunchy style peanut butter. Remove crusts from slices of white bread, roll flat with rolling pin. Spread crunchy style peanut butter. Roll up tightly, then cut each roll in half.

• Dead man’s fingers: make cheese grilled sandwiches and cut into fingers. Decorate tips with tomatoes.

• Witches broomsticks made from frozen packaged puff pastry rolled out and cut into strips with feathered ends.

• Spider web cakes: Make individual cupcakes. Cover with white glaze, allow to set, then pipe on spider’s webs with black decorating gel.

• Devil’s Tails: Cut a thick carrot lengthways into six strips about four-inches long. Trim into the shape of devils tails.