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Halloween is all about dressing up, and this includes decorating your house. Whether you're throwing a Halloween party for children, adults or both, don't neglect to "dress it up" with unique, scary or just plain fun decorations. Create a theme for your party and enhance that theme with carefully chosen decorations, including sound effects and lighting.
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Create a spooky ambiance for your Halloween party with scary decorations. Stretch fake spiderwebs across doorways and in the corners of the guest bathroom, complete with hairy spiders. Use ketchup or fake blood (available at any costume store) to smear bloody handprints across the front door, walls and mirrors of your home.
Create a pentagram on the floor with silver fabric or painter's tape and place a pile of black candles in the middle of it, then watch your guests try to carefully step around it. To make it scarier, add a baby doll wrapped in a blanket in the middle of the candles. Display "body parts" in glass jars. Cocktail onions floating in water tinged with red food coloring look like eyeballs, and Vienna sausages look like fingers. Serve food in hollowed-out skulls (available at most Halloween or costume stores). - For a family-friendly Halloween party, skip the scary displays and stick with a happier theme. Carve smiling jack-o'-lanterns and place them on your porch to greet guests. Place small scarecrows on the food table and have them "hold" bowls of chips, cookies and other yummy treats. String friendly ghosts from the ceiling (see Resources) and watch them dance in the breeze when a guest enters the house. Tiny pumpkins and other small gourds make votive candleholders when the tops are carved out of them. Run a line of pumpkins holding votive candles down the middle of your mantel or place several on a shelf in your guest bathroom.
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Extra touches can include lighting or sound effects. For a scary party, put in a CD of spooky sounds and turn the air conditioner way up to create a literal chill. If you have a fireplace, make sure it is roaring with dancing flames. You can even buy fireplace crystals to change the color of the flames. Install black lightbulbs in key areas of the home, including your porch.
For a friendly party, put in a CD collection of fun Halloween songs, such as Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Install some orange lightbulbs, and place a lot of lit candles around the home to create a cozy feel. Finally, make your home smell like Halloween by using an incense diffuser with a pumpkin or spiced-cider scent.
