Ideas for a Great Halloween Party

If you like dressing up or impersonating your favorite TV characters, you must love Halloween! At this time of the year, you have the perfect excuse to be extra with yourself or even spook your friends and family. Every fabulous party has to start with great ideas, and hosting a Halloween party is no exception. 

After a long hiatus on physical parties due to the lockdowns and social distancing, you can expect an epic return of holiday festivities. If you’re planning on hosting a Halloween party for kids or adults, here are some amazing ideas you can consider:

 Guests wearing halloween costumes dancing in the living room under halloween decorations

Ideas for Decorations 

1. Realistic cobwebs

Realistic decorations are the way to go if you’re unsure how to spook up your party area! You can see cobwebs everywhere, and they can make the whole venue look eerie. It’s easy just hanging a realistic cobweb complete with spiders over your furniture, the ceiling, the stairs, or your porch. You can purchase these cobwebs from any Halloween store, along with additional decorations from the rest of this list!

2. Gothic tablescape

You can even set your table to look more gothic. You can create this gothic Halloween theme on your dinner table with a spooky lace tablecloth and a skull centerpiece. Once you fill the skull vase with red roses, you’re all set to have a fantastic set-up with your food and drinks. 

3. Smoke machines

Smoke machines can also set the mood of your party! Any party set-up can look like the usual set-up, but as long as a smoke machine runs, it would still look Halloween-themed.

Room decorated with halloween elements and smoke from the smoke machine

4. Ghostly chair

You can also cover your chairs with a plain white sheet decorated with cutouts of black felt paper. These cutouts are perfect for the ghost’s facial feature and make an excellent slipcover for your dining chair.

5. Paper pumpkin balls

If you’re planning on making jack-o’-lanterns, real pumpkins are not the only way to make these decorations. You can also make DIY crafty ones to display on your fireplace or your porch by cutting facial features out of black construction paper and gluing them to orange pompom balls.  

Friends in costumes holding pumpkin balls

6. Spiderweb placemats

If you’re planning on going extra, you can design your table set-up to fit your theme. You can get a plain tablecloth in a light color and use spider web placemats. You can readily buy these from a Halloween store. These placemats are simple enough that you can use them even after Halloween! 

7. Witch’s apples

If you want to give your guests a frightening sight from the minute they arrive at the door, you can consider setting up witch’s apples! Using red acrylic paint, you can set up a wooden placard and direct them to the ‘poison apples.’ You can put a couple of crates on your front door and fill them with red apples, whether real or fake. If you’re going extra, you can place another box and artificial witch legs buried in the apples for a more creepy effect!

Ideas for Food and Drinks 

1. Bloody cake pops

You can make your cake pops in any flavor and cover them in white frosting for a more creepy effect. You can also splatter some red-dyed corn syrups to delight kids and adults who are into sweets!

2. Witch cupcakes

Guests would take their hats off to you if you made them out-of-this-world craft cupcakes! You can make them more attuned to the theme by decorating your cupcakes with witch hats. You can bake some chocolate cupcakes so the base looks black, and then top them with buttercream frosting in your choice of colors. To make them look like witch cupcakes, you can top them off with black cupcake liners folded in the shape of a witch hat. To attach them to the cupcakes, you can use toothpicks.

Halloween sweets with cool decorations served on the table

3.Pretzel and roll-ups witch broom

To match your witch cupcakes, you make some delightful witch brooms with pretzel rods and fruit roll-ups. You can unroll the fruit roll-ups and cut them into one-inch strips. Afterward, you can cut some fringe along an edge. Once you wrap them around the end of the pretzel rod, you can start rolling until you have your edible witch broom!

4. Graveyard pudding cups

You can add a twist to your Halloween party with pumpkin spice pudding cups! You can serve them in small dessert glasses and bury a giant tasty cookie to imitate a tombstone. You can even use some icing to write “RIP” on the cookies. To top off the pudding, put enough crushed Oreos to make it look like a stone! 

5. Halloween cocktails

A party isn’t complete without good drinks! You can serve a variety of Halloween-themed alcoholic beverages for guests to enjoy. There are various options to choose from! You can have a Blackberry rum punch as an elegant cocktail. If you’re going for an apple-flavored drink, you can have a shrunken-head apple cider cocktail and carve creepy faces in peeled apples sliced in half. 

If you have kids as your guests, you can serve candy corn for them, while a candy corn martini for the adults is its boozy version. You can also consider caramel apple sangria, bloody whiskey, or green apple vodka. You can design your cups or put some cool toppers to make them more attuned to your Halloween theme. 

Here are some of the tips on doing these cocktail mixes: 

  1. Blackberry rum punch – Combine blackberry soda, slices of blood orange, and rum.
  2. Shrunken head apple cider cocktail – Slice peeled apples in half, dip them in fresh lemon juice, and bake them until they are dried and shrunken. Mix apple juice, cider, star anise, cinnamon, and rum. Simmer for 45 minutes and let them cool at room temperature and refrigerate. Serve along with the shrunken apple faces as toppings.
  3. Candy corn martini – Fill a martini shaker ¼ with ice. Pour four oz. of whipped cream vodka and a cup of pineapple juice and shake with the lid on. Pour the mixture through the strainer into each martini glass and fill ¾ of the glass. Add a tablespoon of grenadine to each drink and garnish with whipped cream.
  4. Caramel apple sangria – Combine caramel vodka and apple cider and top off with freshly chopped apples.
  5. Bloody whiskey – Put 1.5 oz of whiskey in a glass and some Mountain Dew. Pour juice from a quarter of a lime and a drizzle of grenadine.
  6. Jolly Rancher spiked punch – Combine pineapple juice, cranberry juice, sparkling apple cider, ginger ale, and vodka infused with raspberry or passion fruit. 
  7. Green apple vodka – Pour three oz. of grape juice over ice in a glass rimmed with purple sanding sugar. Combine this with 5 oz. Green apple vodka.

6. Halloween goodie bags

If you’re planning on giving out some treats for trick-or-treating, you can give out some Halloween candy. You can even have chocolate bars in these trick-or-treat candy wrappers to make them more memorable. Give your guests a goodie bag full of candy and other sweets to take homes so they can have an unforgettable party at your place!

You may also read our Candy Land Party article for more tips and recommendations.

Ideas for Games and Activities 

1. Pumpkin carving contest

If your family and friends are naturally competitive, you can give them an activity that lets them thrive on competition. You can host a pumpkin carving contest by providing them a pumpkin carving kit. Whoever executes the finest-looking jack-o-lantern wins some kind of prize from you!

2. Skeleton trophie

If you want to add another competitive edge to your Halloween party, you can give out skeleton trophies for different awards! You can pump up your guests to level up their costumes by motivating them with an awarding ceremony at the party!

Hand holding the best costume trophy

3. Fear Pong

If your adult guests are into alcohol and Halloween fun, then fear pong is the best activity for them! This activity is a twist on the classic game of beer pong which is perfect for an adult party. Some dares might be a little too daring, so it’s great to do this if you have a crazy group of friends!

4. Ouija Board

If you have an intimate party, you can play the classic Ouija Board. This game is perfect for a smaller Halloween get-together so that you can keep the spooky factor at an all-time high. Get spooked with one another with your glasses, the board, and your group’s questions. Remember to say ‘goodbye’ so you won’t have unwanted guests for the night!

Halloween only comes once a year, so make sure you experience a great time by letting your family and friends enjoy your party. Through these fantastic ideas, you can bet that everyone will!