Last year, Halloween was spent in lockdown, which means kids didn’t get to celebrate properly (nor did us big kids)! So this year, why not go all out and give them a Halloween to remember with a cracking party?
We love Halloween here at The Hub. Scary movies, crazy costumes and lots of sweets- what’s not to love? So we’ve decided to round up some ideas to make this Halloween the best one yet!
Let’s be honest, Halloween is all about the food. We’ve found a few terrifying treats to spice up the buffet table.
We can’t all be Mary Berry, so we’re starting with an easy option to make skeleton gingerbread men. All you need to do is buy some gingerbread men and some white icing to draw on the skeleton – the kids will love doing this! If you want to bake them yourself, we found this easy recipe to follow too.
Finger hotdogs are another pretty easy option to make your food more on theme. All you need is a small knife to cut out a fingernail shape and knuckle lines before cooking, and you’ve got a quick, simple, stomach-turning Halloween snack.
If you’re more savoury than sweet, these spicy Halloween ribs are perfect for you! It’s all about the presentation with these ribs, as the spicy flavouring should leave them looking particularly gory, whilst placing a red bell pepper in between the ribs will make it look like there’s still a heart in the chest!
This showstopper would definitely make a great centrepiece for the table! A graveyard cake doesn’t even have to be baked by you, you’re just in charge of the decorations. Carefully slice the cake to separate it at the filling and pack in lots of strawberry laces to dangle over the sides, like entrails. On top, sprinkle some coconut shavings mixed with green food dye to look like grass, and stand up a few biscuits to look like gravestones. You could even use chocolate buttons to look like a snake is weaving its way through the graveyard!
Or you could always put out a bowl of Monster Munch and call it a day – we won’t judge.
Our sister Hub over in Buckshaw has a blog packed with plenty of Halloween decoration ideas, but we thought we’d cover the basics here too.
Spiders webs are an easy way to instantly up your game this Halloween. Just drape them along the stair bannister, in the corners of doors and even across the buffet table. Just try not to walk into them!
Scattering a bag of bones about the house is another great way to up the fear factor this Halloween, and doesn’t take too much effort either! You could even have one buried alive in the front garden to scare trick or treaters.
If you’re up for a little bit of DIY and you have a few empty wine bottles lying around, these gothic candlesticks really add to the theatrics of any Halloween party. Just paint the bottle black, pop a candlestick in the top and let the wax drip down the side when you light it. A very easy but effective Halloween decoration.
Family costumes are a surefire way to show your commitment to Halloween and get some insanely cute photos too. But sometimes it can be hard to find a family Halloween costume that has the right number of characters and is appropriate for your child’s age. Well don’t worry, we’ve lined up some great ideas to suit everyone.
Scooby Doo and the rest of the gang are the perfect family costume, full of nostalgia for you and still a firm favourite with kids everywhere. This costume can work for all different types and sizes of families, as there’s plenty of characters to choose from. Even if you’re a family of six, you can still make it work by adding in a bad guy dressed up as a ghost in a white sheet, bound to be unmasked by those meddling kids!
Did you see Disney’s hit movie Cruella this year? If not, you’re missing out! Thanks to its success, Cruella is sure to be an on-trend costume choice this year. Parents can dress up as Cruella and her henchman Horace, whilst you can DIY dalmation costumes for the kids with a white top, a bit of black felt and a few stitches- we just hope you don’t have 101 of them to make, for your sake!
How could we not include the original icons of Halloween: The Addams Family! Yes, nothing quite says Halloween like The Addams Family playing on ITV2 every weekend for a month- but we can’t complain, we love it! Parents can play the gushingly in love Morticia and Gomez Adams- with a long black dress and wig, a pinstripe suit, and plenty of PDA. Any brooding teenager is sure to have Wednesday Addam’s sullen look mastered already. Just add plaits and a black dress, and voila! Middle child Pugsley is another easy costume. All you need is a white and black striped t-shirt, black shorts and black knee socks. This family costume is perfect for families with a little one who can dress up as Pubert, the baby. If not, a baby doll should do.
Keep the kids (and yourself) entertained with these Halloween party games!
The toilet paper mummy game is a classic and it isn’t a real Halloween party without it. You already know how to play- just split up into teams, choose a mummy from each team, hand out the toilet rolls, and see who can wrap up their mummy the best in the time limit! You could use a Halloween song like the Monster Mash as the timer, and tell the teams they have until the end of the song.
Bobbing for apples is another Halloween classic, but it’s at risk of falling out of favour as we’ve all become more aware of hygiene over the pandemic. Luckily, we’ve found a solution that keeps the fun and cuts out the germs. All you need to do is find a large washing up tub, place some towels underneath, fill ¾ with water, and drop in your apples. Rather than letting kids pick up the apples with their teeth, give them some chopsticks to try and grab the apples instead! There you have it, a post-Covid bobbing for apples!
Another fun Halloween game is a spin on pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. You can buy a pin-the-skeleton game here, or you could always make a more gruesome version yourself if you’re feeling creative!
So those are our ideas for throwing a spooktacular Halloween party. Don’t forget to let us know how you get on, and drop by to see us here at The Hub!