Just a few ideas for your special celebration of scary fun and some really Ghostly Halloween Party Food. Easy and fast to make and will be a hit with the kids and the adults.
Spooky
Spiders
Spread peanut butter or process cheese spread onto round butter crackers then place four chow mien noodles or small pretzel sticks on each side of the cracker making eight spider legs. Stack a cracker on top making a sandwich. Dip raisins into peanut butter or cheese spread and place on top as spider eyes. Peter butter makes a great glue.
Bloody Bones
Spare ribs with your favorite barbecue sauce. Arrange ribs to resemble a human rib cage. Place a half of a red pepper or tomato in the middle as the heart and put a real knife or fake knife into the heart.
Bloody
Brains
Any type of cooked spaghetti or spiral pasta with red sauce.
Monster
Hands
Place a candy corn into each finger of a plastic deli glove then fill with popcorn until plump and tie off at the wrist of the glove.
Yummy
Eyeballs
Slice carrots, cucumbers or radishes in bite size circles. Put a dab of cream cheese on top and then put 1/2 a pitted black or green olive on top.
Fingers and
Dip
Peel and slice carrots length wise into finger size pieces. Attach almond slices or plain potato chips pieces onto one end of the carrots with cream cheese as the fingernail. Use the same idea using pretzel rods. Supply your favorite dip.
Apple Bites
Core and slice an apple. Spread peanut butter to one side of the apple slice. Put three or four tiny marshmallows for teeth on top of the peanut butter. Top with another apple slice, peanut butter side down.
Mummy
roll-ups
Use a cooked hot dog or breaded chicken strips or nuggets place in tortilla with ketchup and roll up burrito style leaving one end open. Use ketchup to dot on eyes of mummy.
Food Faces
Create scary, silly, or jack-o-lantern faces using meat, cheese and vegetables pieces on round foods such as pizzas, cheese crisps, quesadilla or tostadas. You can use homemade pizzas or frozen cheese pizzas. Use pepperoni and black olives as eyes, red pepper pieces to form a nose or diced onions to create teeth. For cheese crisps use black olives for eyes shredded lettuce for a mouth, salsa or sour cream for noses or mouths. Be creative.
Bagel
Monsters
Slice bagel in half. Spread on cream cheese fill with meat and use a piece of ham to make a tongue coming out of center of the bagel hole. Attach black olive or pepperoni eyes with cream cheese put lettuce leaves as hair and a carrot nose.
Easy Halloween Party Decorations
Pull out your Halloween decorations.
Any and all skeletons, bats, spiders, snakes, pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns,
witches hat, spider webs, black cats, etc. will do. But don't stop there.
Black tulle
draped over furniture gives an eerie effect. White tulle draped gives a ghostly
effect. Stuff the tulle to form a ghostly shape and hang it up where the breeze
can make it flutter. Hang up several ghosts and hide a rotating fan out of
sight to blow on them. For a party use helium balloons for the ghost head.
Drape one layer of tulle over the balloon, gather it then tie it closed. Tie
the balloon strings to the back of furniture so the helium balloon ghost won't
float away. Helium will only last for the evening so save this tip for party
time.
Bales of hay
look great and provide extra seating. Fog machine, strobe lights, and black
lights provide more eerie effects. When using black lights try to have them in
an area that has no other light source. If possible designate a room where the
door can be shut, it highlights the effect.
Glow in the dark paint also works
well with a black light. Paint butcher or brown wrapping paper and tack that up
on the walls, rather than painting the walls themselves. Dry ice put in
containers or hollowed out pumpkins is great fun. Just add water and watch the
fog start rolling in. Kids are amazed by it. Keep it where the kids can't touch
it because the ice itself can give you a bad burn if touched with bare hands.
The ice is so cold it freezes skin. Buy the dry ice only an hour or two before
the party or when you expect trick or treaters to arrive. Keep in your freezer.
Create a creepy wedding alter. Tack
large black garbage bags on a wall. Drape the bags over an arch. Ask your
grocer's floral department to save you red roses that they were going to throw
out. Dry the roses. Red roses turn an ugly black. Place in spray painted black
vases on either side of the arch. For your bride use any long white dress,
preferably with long sleeves. Drape the dress from the ceiling with fishing
wire so it looks like a ghost. Add a skeleton head and a veil made from tulle.
Blow up white latex gloves and place in the long sleeves.
Bewitching Halloween Ideas
Here are a few creative ideas for
outdoor decorations:
Cut ghost shapes
out of quarter inch plywood with a jigsaw. Then screw in a painted stake to the
back of the cut out, be sure your screws are screwed in from the front of
ghost. Paint white then use black paint to make eyes and mouth and push into
the ground. Using the same idea cut out shapes of a tombstone and use spray
paint with a faux stone finish in grey. Let dry, then paint RIP with black
paint. Foam board can be used instead of plywood but it won't last more than
one season. The plywood will last for several years and since it's flat it
doesn't take up much storage space. Place a skeleton hand on each side of the
tombstone on the "grave" as if the dead person was coming out.
Make a headless man
using an old pair of jeans, shoes, gloves, shirt and jacket. Stuff jeans with
rolled towels, newspaper or plastic grocery bags. Arrange jeans
"legs" on a chair that has a back support or on a bench up against a
wall. Then stuff the T-shirt and stuff the arms. Place the shoes and gloves
where they should be. To arrange the limbs sometimes takes some finessing. Use
fake blood or ketchup around the neck and you're finished. Have your headless
man hold a jack-o-lantern as his head. On Halloween night or party time, spread
raw hamburger where the neck should be and use ketchup for more blood.
Scary forest.
Trim your trees and save branches from 5 to 7 feet long. Spray paint black. You
could also use dead tree branches as well. When dry place upright along the
sidewalk up to your door to create an eerie forest. These could also be used
inside. For an added touch hang cobwebs from branch to branch.
Pumpkins aren’t the only source for jack-o-lanterns. The suggestions
below have to be carved no more than a day ahead since they won't last.
Watermelons look menacing with their outside green skin and bright red flesh
inside. Scoop out the flesh but leave at least a couple of inches of red. Try
small nearly rind less watermelons as well as larger melons. Another option is
to carve eggplants into small demon faces. Buy the largest you can find to make
carving easier. The weird shape of the eggplant adds to the fun.
Halloween Party Activities
Trick or treating is the
time-honored activity but that doesn't mean you can't create your own
traditions. Here are a few ideas to get you going. Use them on the days leading
up to Halloween or to keep kids occupied during a Halloween party.
Paint your child's palm black and stamp them on paper. For a bat place hands together
with thumbs touching keeping fingers close together. For a spider keep wrists
touching spread thumbs and fingers apart. Add eyes in color paint. Using this
same idea paint the bottom of your child's feet or foot white. Stamp onto black
paper. Let dry. Turn paper upside down and paint black eyes and ghost mouth on
the “heel” head of ghost.
Copy off Disney
or any cute characters and let children make them into scary characters.
Make skeletons using Q-tips as bones and glue onto black paper. On black paper use
white chalk to create a spider web or glue Q-tips to create a spider web.
Make a bat
by stuffing a black sock with batting, glue eyes on it and cut out bat wings
from black craft foam and attach with hot glue or a stapler. Make pumpkin pots
by painting the outside of a terra cotta pot orange. Turn upside down and paint
a jack-o-lantern face with black paint and then glue a piece of wood or stick
in the drain hole as the stem.
Jack O Lantern Necklace For older
children paint a walnut completely orange. Let dry and then with a black
sharpie draw a jack –o-lantern face on the walnut with the pointed side as the
top. Cut a piece of black ribbon big enough to fit over your head. Hot glue
each end to the top of the pumpkin making a necklace. Cut out three leaf shapes
from green felt and hot glue to the top of the “pumpkin” covering up where the
two ribbon ends meet.
String hollow macaroni
onto a shoelace (the plastic tip of the shoe lace makes stringing easier) to
make "bone" necklaces.
Draw scary monsters.
Give each child a sheet of paper that has four lines drawn horizontally across
it. Everyone draws a head with the neck just showing beyond the first line. The
paper is fold so the head is hidden and only the neck shows on the remaining ¾
of the sheet. The child passes her sheet to the child sitting to next to her.
Each child then draws the body including arms/wings/tentacles to the waist of
the monster. Again the waist appears just a bit beyond the second line. The
sheet is folded to hide the body. The sheet is passed again and the legs are
added. The sheet folded and the feet are drawn on the last one quarter of the
sheet. When that's finished, the sheet is unfolded to reveal the monsters.
Here's an example, a dragon head, a bear body, octopus legs and lizard feet.
Halloween Party Games
Bob for apples
Costume contest; make sure to have a
prize for everyone.
Play pin the tail on the black cat
or face onto the pumpkin. Use the idea of pin the tail on the Donkey.
Fill a jar full of candy corn and
have the kid's guess how many candy corns are in the jar.
Play flashlight tag in the house or
around the neighborhood.
Tell scary stories in the dark.
Watch scary movies
Everyone participate in making a
witches brew. Give the children a selection of ingredients, such as fruit and
vegetable juices, milk, nut milks, tea, soda, chocolate syrup and a few odd
ingredients such as coffee, lemon juice, ketchup, soy sauce and so forth. Each
child selects one of the ingredients to the brew but every child has to taste
the brew. So while one child may want to add soy sauce for example so the brew
doesn't taste good to the other kids, that child has to taste the brew as well.
An adult should add the odd
ingredients so the brew doesn't have a entire bottle of soy sauce, but just a
few drops.
Play the feel and guess game or eat
and guess game
Blind fold the child or without the
child looking have the child touch or taste each item. You can either have them
guess what they think it feels like or guess what the item actually is. If you
have peeled grapes to eat tell them it is eyeballs and they have to guess that
it is actually grapes or if they are feeling the grapes ask them to guess what
the item is. For this it would be best to give them a list of items like
eyeballs, fingernails etc. and write a number by the matching item. So number 1
is eyeballs and so on. This game could be a little difficult to keep the
children from yelling out answers and sometimes there is more than one answer.
Grapes could be eyeballs or frog eggs.
Here are some items to use:
Peeled or frozen grapes: eyeballs or frog eggs
Spaghetti or spiral pasta: Brains
Yogurt: Slime
Potato chips or almond slices: finger nails
V-8 juice: Blood
Gummy worm: earth worms
Sun Flower Seeds: Witch's Teeth
Fruit roll ups cut in strips: old band aids
Ham Cubes: cut off fingertips
Bell peppers cut in strips: witches skinny fingers
Raisins: shriveled spiders or boogers
Smashed mini wheat: eyelashes
Pretzel rods or sticks: bones
Halved tomatoes or bell pepper: Heart
Sausage links or hot dogs: intestines
Cooked chicken breast: liver
Thin round cheese slices: pieces of skin
Peeled grapes: eyeballs
Pepperoni slices: scabs
Halloween Party
Food
Halloween is a great time to host a party. One of the
most enjoyable aspects of Halloween is the food. There are hundreds of recipes
that have been specifically created for this spooky holiday. The following
ideas will help you plan the yummiest menu possible.
Serve a minimum of sweet treats. You don't want your guests suffering
from 'sugar overload' during the party. To celebrate the occasion, serve
chicken fingers with a blood (any red dipping sauce.) If you prepare them from
scratch, it's not hard to make them resembling the more human variety. Add a
sliced almond for the finger nail for a realistic approach.
Another dish to try is to add equal parts red, blue, and yellow food
color to spaghetti after it's been cooked so it turns an ugly brownish color.
Serve with a green pesto sauce and call it snakes in the swamp.
Make goofy eyeball meatballs. Shape seasoned ground meat into an oval
with a flat top and bottom, bake until done. Cut a round circle out of
mozzarella cheese about the size of a half dollar or one inch in diameter. Cut
grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes into three slices. Cut black olives in half.
Assemble the goofy eyeballs by placing a slice of cheese on the meatball, then
a slice of tomato on the cheese and top with a black olive half. Vary the
placement of the toppings so the eyeballs are looking in different directions.
If you will be serving punch, why not serve the ghoulish variety? Simply
make your favorite punch and add a few ghoul hands. To make these hands, fill
non-powdered rubber gloves with cranberry or other red juice. (Don't overfill,
the fingers of the glove should still move easily.)
Close gloves tightly with rubber bands and freeze flat on cookie sheets, which
have been lined with paper towels. When ready to serve, open gloves with
scissors and add to punch. You may want to break off one or two fingers and add
them separately.
A fun punch can be with one quart of lime drink, one quart of lemon lime
soda and one cup of lime sherbet. The sherbet should be added right before
serving. Stir so the sherbet foams up a bit with the soda. Dust the foam
lightly with cocoa powder to resemble dirt.
It's not a good idea to use dry ice in your punch to make it smoke. Curious
hands may try to touch the dry ice resulting in freezer burn. Instead place the
dry ice in containers out of reach, such as the back of a table and you'll
still have the atmosphere of the smoky fog without the worry of accidents.
Keep the food simple and familiar but with a twist. Rename favorites in the
Halloween theme. Use food coloring in blues, greens, and browns to alter the
way a dish looks. Or use familiar food in unfamiliar ways. For example blanch a
cauliflower head, break apart and then reassemble (this makes the cauliflower
easier to serve) cover the cauliflower with ranch dressing then using ketchup
in a squeeze bottle outline each floret with the ketchup so it looks like a
brain.
Grave Yards Ghosts and More
You could spend hundreds of dollars decorating for
Halloween using store-bought decorations or you could use your creativity and
save that money. Here are several ideas to get you started.
Plastic
Spiders in Ice Cubes Wash plastic spiders in soapy water and
rinse well. Place one spider in each ice cube section. Freeze. Another
alternative is to buy bigger spiders. Wash and rinse. Fill a round quart-size
container half full of ice cubes. Place three or four spiders on top of the ice
cubes. Fill with water to the top of the ice cubes. Freeze. Then fill to the
top of the container with more ice cubes and water. Freeze again. This keeps
the spiders from floating to the top. Place the ice cubes in glasses or the
large ice cube in a punch bowl.
Muddy
Ice Cubes Mix red, yellow, orange, green and purple
food coloring in orange juice to make a mud brown color. Freeze in ice cube
trays. For an added touch, add plastic worms to each cube.
Boo
Bottles Easy, peasy and cheap as in almost free. Remove the
labels from empty gallon containers of milk or water. Draw on ghost faces on
the containers in black using paint or markers. Fill with a layer of clear or
white pebbles to weight the containers down so they won't blow away. Stop there
or add a touch of lights. Wrap small flashlights that only cost about a dollar
with beige or white masking tape. Widen the neck of the gallon container so the
flashlight barely fits in with the light shining down and the switch at the
top. Use a bit more masking tape to fasten the flashlight securely. Or fill the
containers with Christmas mini-lights on a white cord (a green cord shows
through the container and ruins the effect.
Spooky
Mini Garden Paint a terracotta plant saucer black.
Fill with moss, and rocks Place small succulents here and there among the rocks
and moss. Add in artificial crows, a skeleton and skulls. Top the saucer with a
glass lid to enclose your spooky garden. The succulents will live for a week or
two without additional watering.
Bloody
Napkins and Tablecloth This is messy and can stain so do
this somewhere clean up is easy, say the
backyard. Cut napkin-size squares from an old white sheet. Fill a spray bottle
with double strength red kool Aid. Don’t add sugar you just want the color.
Fill a squirt bottle with the red Kool aid as well. Spray and drip the
"blood" on the napkins and white sheet.
More Halloween Decorations
Turn items you probably already have in the house into cute but cheap Halloween decorations. Not only are these ideas cheap but they don't take all that much time.
Egg Carton Bats Spray paint cardboard egg cartons black - inside and out. Cut a section that has three egg depressions. Turn upside down. The middle hump (was an egg depression when right-side up is the head of the bat. Glue two googly eyes in the middle of the hump. The humps on each side are the bat wings. Hot glue fishing wire to the back of the head.
Log Jack-O-Lanterns Use landscaping logs from the gardening department for small jack-o-lanterns and larger round logs you find in the forest for bigger jack-o-lanterns. The smaller logs should be cut into sections from 4 to 6 inches tall. The larger logs from 12 to 15 inches tall. Spray paint orange. Find branches that are stem shaped -- wider at the bottom and narrower at the top. Spray paint the stems black. Glue to the top of the log. Paint faces on the logs in black.
Mummy
Doors Cut sheets of cheesecloth into 8 inch strips. You can
also use old white sheets for this. Wrap the door crisscrossing some of the
strips. This works best with two people one on either side of the door. Before
the last wrapping, add two large white circles with black centers as the eyes
of the mummy.
Lollypop
Ghost These are so easy and cheap you could hand them out
as treats on Halloween. Use round ball-shaped lollypops. Cut two squares of
white paper or cloth about 4 inches
square. Place the squares on top of the lollypop. Tie with black ribbon right
under the lollypop. Draw a ghost face with a black marker. You're done.
Balloon
Spider Web Blow up the balloons. Spray with adhesive or paint
with white glue. Wrap the balloons in white string crisscrossing but leaving
lots of space between the string to resemble a spider webs. Spray or paint
again with glue. Let thoroughly dry. Pop the balloon. The string web should
remain in place. Glue several spiders to the outside of the web.
Ghost
Doll
A little tricky but worth the effort. And they're cheap to make. Place a baby
doll in a sitting position with its arms straight out. A vinyl or plastic doll
with no hair works best for this. Soak cheesecloth in a heavy starch solution.
Wring out. Drape the cloth around the doll, molding it the head and around the
arms and legs. Let dry. When you remove the doll the cloth retains the doll's
shape for an eerie looking ghost.
Hope you can find a load of fun to make your Halloween a most Scary One!
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