The Semi-Homemade Halloween Party - aka the Best of the 70s, 80s,90s and today

Last weekend we threw a totally Semi-Homemade Haunted Halloween Party! The invite list was for families only (so we left out our kidless friends this time!) The evite went out (real invites would have been so much cuter, but...) with an invitation to our 'Haunted Mansion' and to come in costume! And wow, they did.....

I just love Mr. Everything's sense of humor! He would get the award for hardest working! He decided in advance to come as Richard Simmons (wouldn't that be the 80s?) and he grew his hair out! Dedication, right? And it paid off... Here's his 'sorority pose' with Mr. Fix-It, a hard core gansta rapper....

I felt cheated because you couldn't quite get the whole essense of his costume... so Mrs. Everything graciously sent me this shot of him on Halloween. Check those shorts! And the legwarmers!

I always say this, but I wish I would have taken more pics! Here are some snapshots of the costumes, but there were even more! There was an OctoMom... a FaceBook (I didn't see The Office, so I had to ask... he had BO on one side of his face, OK on the other!) Both definitely a product of the 2000s. There was a pretty Ladybug (I loved cute bugs in the 90s - my friends all got tattos!), a sexy 70s girl (70s, duh), another farmer.... and that was just the adults!

Some of the kiddos! This was before Spiderman, Chewbaca and some princesses showed up!

Everyone was in costume except Miss Priss - she wasn't feeling it and that was fine! So here's a pic of her (with daddy Mr. Everything!) in her full Nemo gear...

We tried to spookify the house - as much as we could in this damn recession! I already shared my repurposed Halloween decor.... I had leftover helium from G-man's Pirate Birthday bash, so we blew up leftover black balloons and tied them with purple ribbons! We dangled that shrieking witch (the one that scared the hell outta Big Sis!) from the chandelier in our entry... And the rest? Cheapo cobwebs, held on to the staircases by twisty ties.



Oh, how I love paper lanterns... esp when they cost $1/ea! So we had them everywhere! At the bar.... on the "spooky staircase" (the kids nicknamed it that! I put cobwebs and lanterns on the front staircase, to discourage the kids from using it. I wanted them on the back staircase, where we could supervise all that running up and down!)



I didn't get to ALL my semi-homemade ideas, so I decided to stick to one big thing - a spooky dessert bar!

Remember how much I loved purple & green as a new Halloween trend? I went with that for 1/2 of the table and traditional orange & black for the other side!

Here's the orange & black... I had leftover skull lollipops from G-man's birthday, so I used them as a centerpiece (again!) They were untouched at his party... but the kids tore thru them, they were gone before I knew it!

And the funky side! I'm known for making brownies, but I wanted low maintenance! AND I had leftover skull cupcake wrappers, so.... I made individual brownies, stuck in purple & green cupcake toppers... and displayed! The center pics is a skull decal from my friend Marilyn and Decal Mongrams - love, love her stuff! Then coordinating candy rounded it out....

This dip is AWESOME! Mrs. Everything served it at Miss Priss's 2nd birthday party and immediately I thought I could recreate it in the shape of a witch's hat (if you squint and close one eye and look at it sideways... does it kinda look like a witch's hat?) Just know that this has peanut butter and cream cheese. And you serve with apple slices. See the rest here.

A couple of $1 table cloths and creepy cloths and scary green and black spiders.... and that was it!

The party was so fun! Kids colored, ran up and down the stairs, ate pizza... The adults chatted, made new friends (we invited a HUGE mix of friends and lots of them didn't know the others - I loved all the mingling!)

Parties on Fri nights are hard. Esp when kids are involved. And everyone is in costume. The party ended before 10pm. And I totally get that. But we were still ready to par-tay! (Obviously, just look at us!) ;)

So.... we put G-man to bed and Mr. Fix-It, Big Sis and I had a rockin' dance party! I LOVE this one - you can totally imagine the fun we were having!

This slightly reminds me of party pics in college.... Big Sis loved being silly with us! (And we love partying in the safety of our own home!)

That's about all I have the time to round up - in my mind, I've moved on to the other holidays and I'm working on a Semi-Homemade Christmas Trends to follow up the one I did for Halloween!

But before I leave, just a couple other Halloween events:

Me and Pirate G-man on Halloween, after trick-or-treating

And Big Sis with all her loot! She was a modern Dorothy because she had been to a prissy girl birthday party (complete with hair, makeup, nails, dress up - and a runway fashion show for us mommas!), and still had the updo going on!

See that decal on the pumpkin to the left? Another Decal Monograms greatness! It says:

The Witch Is In

Love it!

And the parade at school, the traditional Dorothy.... Her teacher was a Pink Lady!

I walked G-man thru a little of the parade. (Ignore that silly look on my face!) But isn't G-man the most adorable pirate ever?


I love Halloween! Okay, moving on..... ;) Happy weekend, y'all!