This year, we massively scaled down our production. There wasn’t any way we could top last year’s decorations and we didn’t have enough time to go all out this year. It just didn’t feel like October without a Halloween party though, so we threw together a last-minute vintage party theme. We both adore vintage Halloween pictures and decor and we wanted to have an intimate and scaled down retro bash.
We picked out a favorite vintage Halloween picture for our invite and created our invitation using Pingg. I really used to like Pingg but after I sent out the invitations I noticed that they’ve added way more annoying ads to the site, so I think we’ll go back to Evite if we throw another party.
I found some fun vintage games to play as well. For “Spooning Match,” we tied two spoons together with a 6-inch piece of ribbon and then had couples race to finish a bowl of ice cream and for “Ducking for Apples,” we tied apples to fishing wire and then had guests try to finish an apple for a prize.
For the decorations, N spent the whole week cutting out 113 construction paper bats. He then made a papier-mâché moon and we dropped a glow stick into it to give it a nice eerie glow. I wish the pictures could show how amazing the moon looked!
N stuck most of them to the wall and then we hung a few for a 3-D effect.
We placed the dessert table, jam-packed with mini muffins, Italian cookies, caramel apples and candy, below the bats. I bought some spiderweb shaped collage paper from Target and then taped them together to create a table runner to place over the purple table cover. Our awesome Halloween tree served as a perfect centerpiece and some battery lit candles finished off the effect.
For the bar, I made some spiked apple cider from this Martha Stewart “Shrunken Heads in Cider” recipe. It was okay, but far too much effort for the overall taste.
N threw together an awesome graveyard for decorating the bar. He used an old artist’s clipboard as a base and then he shaped hills using chicken wire. He then papier-mâchéd and covered it all with real dirt to create the ground. For the grass he used, well, real grass. To scale it though, he ground it up in a coffee grinder and then glued little bunches all over the graveyard. The tombstones are all made of card stock and the “trees” are really pieces of a dead tomato plant (damn you Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter!) Anyhoo, I really loved his walnut pumpkins too, they each have their own distinctive features. The “stems” are pieces of twisted paper painted green.
Our good friends Tiff and Joe (check out some of their art in my earlier posts) drew and then hand cut the scaredy-cat, the dancing cats and the rats. They looked killer!!! Here’s Tiff’s scaredy-cat at the base of the bar.
You can see Joe’s dancing cats on the mantle.
N and I created the colorful vintage kitty out of construction paper. N first drew the cat on black construction card stock paper based off of a vintage design we found online. Then we traced and cut out the various pieces out of colored construction paper and layered them on with glue. I love how this turned out. We gave it away as a prize for the best costume.
We got this idea from Martha Stewart’s Halloween Central. Joe didn’t need the templates though and he free-handed the rats. They really creeped everyone out!
For the living room, we just draped white sheets over all the furniture to make it look like an abandoned house. N hung up some banshees from the ceiling and we used candle light to make it feel more haunted.
For the food table, Joe and Tiff suggested this awesome crêpe paper decoration. It really helped to fill up the space and it was just stunning! Who knew crêpe paper could still be such an awesome addition to a party.
For the backdrop to the food table, here are our versions of some vintage looking decorations, again from Martha 😉
Even though our party was way more last-minute and smaller than most years, we had a blast. Happy haunting!
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