[Samhain.Voodoo]

Hi everyone I know I've been missing again, however I'm about to pull out all the stops in my first ever Halloween party in my first real home. I'm really excited, however my boyfriend and I just finished decorating for every day use. There's too much that isn't Halloween related (like our gigantic Bob Marley painting), but we spent too much effort in putting it all up that we don't want to take it down to decorate for Halloween.

So I was thinking of buying cheap black tarps and pinning them to our walls over all the paintings and stuff and then putting spiderweb over that. I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions for jazzing up our walls.

I'm also under the dilemma of wondering what costume and theme to go with this year. I guess because it's the first time I can really decorate a whole house I'm overwhelmed with possibilities. I know I want a very bloody bathroom, complete with a flies soundtrack hidden under the sink to freak people out, and my menu will be BBQ pork, ribs, etc (cannablism type spread) at first I was thinking a spider queen or something to that effect.

Basically I'm just wanting to do EVERYTHING and I don't even know where to begin. I'm very open to opinions and suggestions on everything. Thanks in advance!

 

[Jenn&MattFromPA]

Well, ultimately you have to do what makes you happy, but I'm a somewhat-organized person, to the way I approach things like this is to think about whether this will be my ONLY party of this kind, or if I'm likely to do it again if it's fun enough/successful enough.

If you only do it once, then it makes sense to throw together anything you want, but if you think you'll do it every year, then I think it makes sense to pace yourself a bit. Not only for financial reasons, but so you can learn from experience and so you have plenty of themes available to keep you interested & inspired.

Since you for sure have an idea for your bathroom & food, decide whether you want your whole party & costume to tie into that, or if you're okay with things just being kind of random.

Since your bathroom & food ideas lean towards cannibalism/bloody, I'd probably go out & find as many white sheets, curtains, painters drop clothes, shower curtains, etc that I could find. Then take some time to make 'bloody' handprints, foot prints, blood spatters & spills all over them. Hang those white cloths around, make some into pillows or sofa covers, some table cloths, etc. You could put the bloody handprint clings from Dollar Tree onto your walls & windows too. For your art posters or frames, I'd probably go ahead and just cut out black paper/posterboard in shapes to cover each one, leaving the frames intact. Then I'd buy the Dollar Store lenticular pictures (the ones that change from normal to demon depending on how you look at them), and I'd hang those frames with tape or thumbtacks onto the posterboard.

As far as your costume, you could be a bloody victim, you could be the killer, you could be a demented fan of the killer, you could be a detective hunting the killer, etc. Or you could just do something completely different.

The nice thing about keeping a theme is that often it IS possible to reuse some of your decorations. Bloody white sheets can easily be reused, or they can be dyed black to be used again. Same for the lenticulars - you can reuse them in different ways in the future. For our parties, we stay with orange or black plates & cups, the same tablecloths and then just change the napkins each year - that way if there are leftovers, we can use them again the next year and it's cheaper to buy in bulk.

Anyway, just some thoughts to consider!

 

[Samhain.Voodoo]

thanks so much for the suggestion! I think the bloody sheets are a really good idea and I'm pretty sure I have enough in my closet to do the whole house. thank you again

 

[dbruner]

I usually take all of my pictures down and put up halloween ones, but I have one that is basically bolted to the wall, that one I cover with several layers of creepy cloth and then a spider. You can mix themes together and call it Classic Halloween, that way you can mix gothic, zombies, witches and it works. I did a bloody bathroom one year, they are awesome, put lots of blood in the sink, it will dry but every time someone turns on the faucet it refreshes! Good luck with your party!