So my roommate and I are contemplating having a Halloween party this year. I was thinking vaguely that it might be fun to combine it with a Mafia game (assign roles ahead of time, and have the game progress kind of loosely, without everyone necessarily sitting down in a circle the entire time). Does anyone have any other party game ideas? Decoration ideas?
Costumes will be mandatory, of course. I’m thinking about dressing up as Miho from Sin City, but am still exploring options. There will probably be somewhere between 10-20 people at the party - it won’t be huge. I think.
Last year I baked Sweet Severed Fingers for my undead Little Red Riding Hood costume. They were a huge hit.
I used to have a friend that threw kick-ASS Halloween parties. Costumes were required, and much of fun was made of folks who didn’t really try.
His house decorated from top to bottom and he had contests for most original costumes, best costumes, etc. The prizes were just little things, but it was fun to hear his comments.
Jello shots were always there. You could use food coloring to make them black, like black slime, or something.
I don’t really remember “scary” foods. (That could be from a combination of time passing, and well, lots to drink at these parties).
A themed party might be good, but it’s hard for some people to follow a theme and be creative. I don’t know, maybe your friends are very creative. I’ve known other people that threw themed parties, like pirate themes. Even their invitation looked like something from the past with all the appropriate pirate talk on it. They had “grog” and treasure chests too.
My husband and rented costumes and dressed up as big chickens. The host didn’t even know who the hell we were until we pulled the head pieces off. We showed up with big buckets of chicken tenders as our contribution to the food. Yup, we were eating our young.
A couple of years ago my sis threw a Halloween party for the Diva. She served red punch, and for the punch bowl, instead of ice cubes we made ice hands. We filled a pair of very-well-washed surgical latex gloves with water and put them in the freezer the night before. In the evening, we peeled the gloves off and voila! Ice hands!
Two Halloween parties we hosted in the past that were fun:
“Come as you were” - the costumes were supposed to represent a past life. Actually the choices were wide open, but the stories about the “past lives” were pretty funny.
Video Scavenger hunt - in costume - teams, each with a video cam, had a list of tasks to perform and record within a limited geographic area. They went from simple (go to the high school baseball diamond and do baseball stuff) to the absurd (go to Sears, sit on the riding mowers, and sing the Green Acres theme song.) The clues for the tasks were not so straightforward, so the teams had to figure out where to go and what to do. They had a time limit, then we all returned to our house to watch the videos and eat/drink/hang out. Best of all, one of the guys did video stuff for a living, so he took all of the originals and combined them on a single tape, then gave copies to everyone.
A friend of ours is a Halloween baby and she always threw herself a big bash - renting a hall and everything. Highlight of the party was the “Gong show” where the brave among us performed for the rest. Prizes were broken trophies that she scored from yard sales. It was a lot of fun!
The ice hands idea is cute. And the scavenger hunt idea sounds fun! We couldn’t do it here, though - not enough of us have video cameras and this neighborhood is not one we want to walk around in at night.
Has anyone every tried playing a party version of something like Clue?
I love the Scavenger hunt idea, no idea how I’d ever make that work here either, though.
Some of those recipes look scarily complex, if you want an easier and surprisingly yummy snack, try pumpkin dip. 1 brick cream cheese, 1 big-assed can (16 oz maybe?) of packed pumpkin, 2 cups powdered sugar and a few tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice. (cinn, ginger, cloves, nutmeg)
Soften the cream cheese and mix it all up the day before, serve with graham cracker sticks and/or nilla wafers for dipping. You could label it cute, Party Victim Puree or something, I guarantee no leftovers.
We never add color to our jello shots, just make batches of orange and grape, it looks black in dim lighting anyway.
Speaking of lighting, hit the dollar store for oodles of Hweenish candle holders and cheap votives. Everyone looks better by candlelight anyway, and there’s half your decorating and atmosphere taken care of.
Food: kitty litter cake (google it) - it looks horrifying and actually tastes pretty good. Or cat poop cookies, which I first heard about here on the Dope. I made them last year for the Boy Scouts’ Halloween party. They looked horrifying but really weren’t tasty.
I got a brain-shaped gelatin mold and now must find recipes for it. Also will use the mold as part of my own costume (“Brain-eating Amoeba”). Or maybe i’ll just throw on a sheet with oddly-shaped protrusions, and wander around holding a plateful of the gelatin product, taking bites periodically.
Typo Knig will put on a white T-shirt with the chemical symbol for cholesterol on the front of it.
Kitty litter cake sounds hilarious. We have two cats and we’ve listed them as hosts so it would be appropriate.
I would love to do candles, but I’m afraid people will end up setting the house on fire. :eek: A few weeks ago our friend had a party with votive candles everywhere and one guy burned a hole in his shirt. Heh.
