Thread: where do I start?

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I've been lurking for 2 years, decided to join today. DH and I will be having a party on Halloween night. We have NOTHING planned. We love halloween, decorating, but this is our first year of doing it big.

We have NOTHING built(I want to do a small cemetery). We have nothing planned for the party. I'm starting to freakout, but have no clue where to start. Any advice for a newbie???

Welcome! Glad you finally joined!

As far as doing your first "big" party, might I suggest you take a few minutes and peruse our pics from past parties. They started out small & simple 8 years ago and have grown to quite the event.

STARK Madness Photo Gallery - Home > Parties > Halloween

Last year was my first party and I decided to have it late in the game. We didn't go with a specific theme to make it easier. We had to buy a lot of props and tombstones "ready -made" from the stores. Obviously it costs less to do it yourself, but if your'e short on time...well, you know. In 2007, my graveyard was entirely store bought except the fencing (we already some stuff that worked).. We had about 8 or 9 tombstones, a fog machine, a grave digger, some ground breakers and bones. We put orange lighting on the cemetary fence, and I bought a lighted archway from Target for the entrance. Everyone seemed to really like it.

Is your party for kids or adults or both? Mainly indoors or outside? You could probably get some more ideas if we had a little more info. Are you serving food or dinner?

There are tons of ideas on the forum here - just keep looking. Hope this helped a little.

O.k., first, take a deep breath. Settling on a theme might be a good first step. Decide how many folks you'll be inviting and from that what your budget is to feed, water and entertain them. You can do a little or a lot as far as decor is concerned, you just have to figure out how much time & money you want put into it. Once you have the number of folks that'll be attending and how extravagant your decor set-up will be, you should be able to plan accordingly. Good luck!

Originally Posted by LV Scott T

Welcome! Glad you finally joined!

As far as doing your first "big" party, might I suggest you take a few minutes and peruse our pics from past parties. They started out small & simple 8 years ago and have grown to quite the event.

STARK Madness Photo Gallery - Home > Parties > Halloween

Thanks so much! How did you make the head on the platter from 2001?

We have between 20 and 30 people coming. There will be small kids there(aged 5 and under)- about 7 or 8 of them.

We planned on feeding them- what, I have no clue. I have looked in the food thread on the party planning thread. Budget is probably around 500. We won't be providing beer though- our guests will be.

DH will be in the field for 2 weeks next month, so it really only gives us about a week and a half to do things together(I could work on it by myself of course though).

It will be both indoors and outdoors. Food will be all indoors. but the guys will probably be hanging out majority outside in the back. I plan on making a pinata for the kids, and putting on cartoon halloween movies for the kids.

We live on an army post and we're about 45 miles away from the nearest glorified truck stop town. We live about an hour and half from restaurants, malls, a Spirit store so running into town is kind of a hard thing to do.

oh no, did I scare everyone off??

I would suggest to pick one main decor (the cemetery) and just do that this year with quick decorations (shredded garbage bags in the trees and on the outside lights) for the rest of the house. Get a fog machine for the yard and get a CD of Midnight Syndicate's music to set the mood (I like 13th hour). Be sure to make it a masquerade party and you should be all set. Then you can improve on that for next year.

Here's a picture of the garbage bags in trees (I also put raffia and shredded burlap):

Welcome! No you didn't scare anybody off...It's just getting close to Halloween and we are all running around with like headless chickens.

Okay, I know cheap and easy....they are my friends. This may be lengthy so bare with me.

For my first and cheap party I took black trash bags, cut the down the sides to make one long strip. The I covered the walls in the party area with them. I bought the box to 50 industrial bags at Lowes or Home Depot for about 8 to $10 dollars. Then I covered furniture with white sheets and chair seats with white pillow cases. (Put some moth balls out morning of the party and you'll have the funky-old smell by party time). Use colored lights...Blue works good for the moonlight effect, green for creepy, purple, or Orange (my favorite indoors if you don't want it too dark...it gives it that old house look).

I used dental floss to hang a spider that dropped every time the front door opened. Two eye hooks in the ceiling and end of the floss tacked to the top edge of the door, threaded thru the eyes and attached to the spider.

I made tombstones out of cardboard boxes and spray painted gray, then used a large black mark-so-lot and wrote the epitates. More card board for a fake fence. some pumpkins, moss, vines, dollar store mice, rubber snakes etc. I also made fake leaves by cutting them out of paper sacks and crinkling them up and threw them around the tombstones.

Take a pole lamp if you have one, unplug from the wall (duh!) and cover it with an old Halloween costume and you have an instant prop. Mine was a reaper robe, the kind with the built-in head and face cover, some skeleton gloves. I even took one of those screaming door mats you can buy and rolled it up and put it in the sleeve. When someone touched it the Reaper screamed...quite a few people jumped.

I took latex gloves and blew them up and cut a small slit in the black plastic on the wall and had taped the gloves in the plastic and had a hall of hands and eyes. I made the eyes from clear craft marbles, two sheets of cardboard and clear string lights. I mounted the lights on one cardboard sheet in groups of two (like eyes) and then I marked the other sheet where the lights were and cut holes. Then I pushed the marbles into the holes and covered it all with black plastic. If the plastic trash sack you use here is one of the cheaper ones. (can you believe it, there are really useful here) then when you plug in the lights, the eyes show thru the plastic.

Hang bats, string webbing. put on some creepy music and have fun!

I have lots of cheap ideas, look at my photo albums. They were parties done a a budget! If you see something and want to know what its made/how its made, let me know...I'll be glad to help.

Originally Posted by carolann

Thanks so much! How did you make the head on the platter from 2001?

That's MeatHead - our guest of honor at all of our parties since 2001. Here are a few more: STARK Madness Photo Gallery - Food Creations

1 nicely-shaped skull (we always use plastic, but I guess foam would work)
2 boxes of red Jello (only use HALF of the water called for)
1 sheet of cheese cloth
1/2 pound thinly sliced deli ham (or roast beef or turkey)

Make a batch of red "Jello" DOUBLE-THICK and set it up in a cookie sheet. This year, we plan on lining the cookie sheet with plastic wrap since we always have trouble removing the Jello and you DON'T want to use a non-stick spray. Once the Jello is set, wrap the cheese cloth tightly around the skull and pin in back. Carefully cut away from eyes and teeth. The cloth helps hold the Jello in place. Place the skull in the center of a round platter. Carefully remove the Jello in large pieces and cover the front, top, and sides of the cloth-covered skull. Immediatelly start covering the Jello with the deli meat. Use overlapping layers from bottom to top to help hold it all in place. When fully covered (several layers thick), you can carve away the meat/Jello in front of the eyes and teeth. Add eyebally (edible or not). Line the rest of the platter with lettuce and add the other meats & cheeses. Stick a fork in him and serve!

Mistakes: left the rind on (2001), sliced meat way too thin (2003), used turkey (2005).

By the way, most people do not realize he is actually supposed to be eaten!