Party Of The Undead

Who said you have to be the life of the party? Invite guests to be the best-dressed zombie, mummy or corpse-bride in town. Pass out invitation cards that look like tombstones. Greet your guests, or pesky “live” trick or treat-ers with skeleton heads or fake hands reaching up from the ground and create a spooky cemetery effect on your front lawn. Don’t disappoint your guests! Live up to the holiday spirit by spiffing up your house décor.

Instead of using plain white sheets, create a hangman's noose and hang them around the room. Use ambient light, artificial fog, recorded haunting music and a few witches surprising your arriving guests. Halloween decor can be readily found in the most unlikely of places. If you can not find exactly what you are looking for in your local stores, you can always procure decorations from your friendly neighborhood Halloween specialty shop.

Don’t forget the food! The undead have BIG appetites. Serve the undead’s favorite, body parts! Serve boiled hotdogs as severed human fingers. Make a fruit punch made of Red Kool-Aid and drop peeled grapes in it, as human eyeballs. Form your cookies into creepy shapes, like spiders or witch's fingers, using cookie cutters or your hands. Top your cupcakes with anything from candy corn and gummy worms to novelty rings and plastic spiders or decorate them with creepy designs.

To “liven” things up a bit, have your smallest guests play Mummy Von Wrap. All you need are a roll of toilet paper for each pair of children. The first one to completely wrap their partner up in toilet paper wins! For adults, two rolls may be required for a slightly more complicated task. Once the first partner is completely rolled, they in turn will have to wrap their unwrapped partner. First pair to empty their two rolls of toilet paper brings home a special prize.

Another fun and fulfilling thing you can do is to prepare a witch hunt game for everyone! Cut out paper witch hats. Color two hats a different color from the rest. Hide all the witch hats throughout the house and send the kids to find all the hats. The kids who find the different colored hats get the biggest prize and the two who got the most hats collected get the next biggest prize. Have extra prizes in case of ties. Also, you might want some small prizes for the people who didn't get a prize. And don’t forget to park your broom by the door!

Do not forget the most important token of the event, your giveaways! The possibilities are endless when it comes to party favors. It all depends on the number of people you are inviting and your budget for the occasion. An easy idea is to have each guest pose for a picture next to the winner of the best costume in the party. If you have a digital camera, you can instantly print out the pictures and send them home with them in an inexpensive Halloween frame and a thank you note as a simple party favor that they will treasure as a precious memory for a lifetime.