Once you are too old to trick or treat, Halloween dinner parties are a fun way to celebrate the holiday.
You can dress up, serve some odd looking food, and spend time with your family & friends in a Halloween themed enviroment.
Here are a few ways to decorate for an unforgettable Halloween dinner party.
Outside
Decorate the outside of your home to set the mood for your Halloween dinner party.
You might already have the outside of your home decorated for fall, so just add a few extra Halloween items to your fall decor or you can remove a few fall decor items to make room for your Halloween decorations.
Take advantage of any of your plants that might have died and keep them on your porch. You can even spray paint them black for added spooky effect.
You can use artificial spider webs, scary silhouettes in the windows, a smoke machine, dead branches, flameless candles, spooky music, funny tombstones, or whatever else you like.
For less scary decor, opt for a fall theme with uncarved pumpkins (but add some dark or black colored pumpkins), unique gourds, and colorful mum flowers lining your walkway.
Also consider how you plan on handing out candy to trick or treaters without them constantly disrupting your dinner party - maybe you can leave candy on your front porch or have a teenager hand out candy for you.
You can even get creative and play a recording of the poem The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe read by Vincent Price that starts playing as people start walking up your walkway towards your front door.
Dining Table
Since it is a dinner party, the dining table or buffet table should be the focal point of the evening.
You might choose to have a more elegant dinner party or a more spooky dinner party.
For an elegant Halloween tablescape, first select your color scheme.
You might want your color scheme to be classic black, fall colors with some black, or you can select a more unique color scheme of dark and moody jewel toned colors like dark plum, burgundy, navy, deep teal, brass, and/or dark pink.
Select items with a lot of texture, such as a silky tablecloth, a rough wicker charger, shiny silverware, and a sparkly crystal chandelier.
Don't be afraid to spray paint decor items in your rich dark colors or a metallic color.
For a maximalist style Halloween tablescape, add a lot of unique high quality Halloween decor items (perhaps vintage or antique) around your table to make your tablescape interesting and memorable.
Don't get out the silver polish - tarnished silver is more dramatic than polished silver when it comes to a Halloween tablescape.
If you prefer a more spooky Halloween dinner party, decorate your table with dripping candles, dry ice, owls, black birds, skulls, bugs, bats, bottles with labels for potions or poison (perhaps containing your dinner party's signature cocktail), vampire teeth as napkin rings, a black tablecloth with a burlap or spider web topper, and whatever else you desire.
Your color scheme could be black & white, fluorescent colors, or whatever colors you feel best represent the mood you are trying to create.
Consider covering your dining chairs with plain white fabric to make the house feel abandoned.
You can decorate your chandelier with spider webs and a few fake spiders.
You should dim or turn out the overhead light in the room to create an appropriate spooky affect.
If you have more dining chairs than guests, consider putting life sized skeletons in the extra chairs.
You can drape scarves or other fabric over lamps to dim the light, just make sure they will not overheat from the light bulb or get too close to the electrical outlet.
Consider buying discounted almost dead flowers from your local florist a week ahead so that you can have dried flowers as your centerpiece.
Your dinner party does not have to be inside. If the weather is mild where you live, consider hosting an outdoor Halloween party for a unique change of scenery. Just make sure that your guests are aware so that they dress appropriately.
photo courtesy of Windell Oskay flickr.com/photos/oskay/5135202426/Food and Drink
Halloween food should be creative and have a fun or spooky Halloween theme.
You can serve gummy worms, anything that looks like brains or eyeballs, a large sub sandwich in the shape of a snake, and/or food that looks like insects, reptiles, or rodents.
A crowd favorite food is a tomato topped with mozerella cheese topped with a green olive to look like an eyeball. Use a tiny bit of black olive for the pupil.
Another favorite is a pretzel stick with a marshmallow on each end dipped in white chocolate to resemble a leg bone.
You can also serve non-Halloween crowd favorites but add some plastic spiders on the plate or in the bowl for affect.
Be creative and label everyday food with a fun Halloween theme, such as peeled oranges with a tiny piece of celery at the top labeled as sweet pumpkins, raisins labeled as scabs, red gelatin labeled as blood, and grapes labeled as eyeballs.
A common fun idea is to freeze water in a latex glove to create ice in the shape of a hand. Use the ice in a punch bowl. You may want to make several ice hands to refresh the punch bowl throughout the party.
Consider serving bold colored drinks in fancy glasses to offset the black colors of your tablescape.
Give thought to whether you want to give your guests favors when leaving your dinner party. A gourmet candy apple wrapped in cellophane would be a memorable gift.
Other Decorations
You should also decorate other areas of your home, not just the dining room.
Think of other places guests might go - the powder bathroom, the back porch, or the kitchen.
Here are a few other ideas for Halloween decorations.
You can transform your family photos on display to give them spooky eyes or a ghost like appearance.
Also consider covering the rest of your furniture with white sheets to make your home feel abandoned.
You can decorate your home with specimen jars, vintage medical utensils, gargoyles, curiosities, and black or blood red flowers.
Using a black light or making items glow in the dark is a nice touch.
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