Coolest Halloween Party Ideas

Mix the Halloween party ideas below with your own cool ideas, stir, add a bat's ear and a witch's tooth, boil, and... POOF... brace yourself for a FANTASMIC success!

The great thing about throwing a Halloween party is that you can recycle your old Halloween decorations AND you can rationalize purchasing new decorations with the idea that you'll use them over and over every Halloween!

Without a doubt, This AWESOME party site is the coolest (and one of the cheapest) places to get your Halloween decorations, party supplies, accessories, great haunted murals and scene-setters, and every other imaginable (and unimaginable) Halloween party item.

For the largest selection and best deals on kid costumes, make-up and dress accessories, take a look at THIS Cool Costume Attic... (If you're planning to make your own costumes, it's also a great place to visit in order to get some cool and original ideas.)

One of the keys to an awesome Halloween party is the costumes. Make sure everyone is dressed up. Have plenty of easy-to-wear "extra" costumes handy. Inevitably a guest or two will arrive without a costume and then be filled with regret. You can place simple pieces in a "dress up" box by the front door including inexpensive hats, masks, wigs, necklaces, leis, vests, etc.

Invitations

There are lots of fun invitation shapes you can choose from. For instance, one of the easiest Halloween party ideas is to cut out a pumpkin from orange poster board. "Carve" a fun face with a pair of scissors and write the party info on the back. You can also turn the pumpkin into a mask, or write the invitation on a different party mask. Or, if you want to generate a bit of spine chills, write the invitation in the form of a tombstone.

To spook your guests even more, one of the coolest Halloween party ideas is to put these cool glow-in-the-dark Bag-O-Bones in a brown paper bag and tie the invitation to it with a black ribbon.

Write something like: Dear grave digger, come have a "bone-chilling" time at (kid's name) Halloween party. Bring your scariest costume on (Date and Time) to the (your family name) Haunted House (address). Write down "Please RSVP", cross out the RSVP and put down RIP instead. Finish off with: COME IF YOU DARE!

Decorations

If you've decided on a really creepy party with all sorts of body parts, spine-chilling mummies and ghosts, take a look at the scariest and sometimes even gruesome items offered by The Fright Catalog (very appropriately named, you'll see why…)

Some of the basic Halloween party ideas for decorations can include orange and black streamers, imitation spider webs, rubber spiders and rats, hanging bats, real and plastic pumpkins, blinking skulls, corn stalks, scarecrows, and bails of hay.

For smaller kids, you can tone done the fright factor by turning your party area into a pumpkin patch with Jack-O-Lanterns and hayrides. If it's for older kids, transform your party area into a scary Haunted House or Graveyard with witches, mummies, and all sorts of other spine-chilling ideas.

You can buy a helium tank from Walmart for less than $20 and use it to inflate black and orange balloons. To each balloon, attach long metallic ribbons so your guests have to walk through the strings.

One of the coolest Halloween party ideas is to drape some of the balloons with a sheet, cut out a face and tie them at the neck for some cool ghosts. For spookier ghosts, take a glow in the dark trinket, place it inside the balloon before you inflate and you'll have glow-in-the-dark ghosts!

You can also use cool glow-in-the-dark paints on black poster board to make a happy birthday or Halloween sign, such as "Luna C. Asylum".

A very cheap and fun decoration is to hang homemade windsocks from trees or the ceiling. Use cone-shaped party hats, paint them black, and attach black steamers around the inside rim. Hang them upside down so that the point of the hat is pointing downwards.

One of the spookiest Halloween party ideas for a setting is to build your own graveyard. Make tombstones out of cardboard, Styrofoam, or even cereal boxes and paint funny epitaphs such as: Barry D'Live, M.T. Box, Dracula Born 1732, died 1756,1835,1877, U. R. Next, Fester N Rot, Here Lies Good old Fred...A Great Big Rock Fell on His Head. Add fake hands coming up out of ground as well as various "bones" and "skulls" popping up by headstones.

Here's a cool idea for a "circle of ghosts". Take six white small trash bags and fill them with crumpled newspaper. Push one dowel into each bag, wrap with masking tape around the neck, drape a white sheet over each head and tie with a string. Now you have six ghosts. Arrange them in a circle about two feet apart from each other (around a tree, grave, etc.). Finally, knot the corners of the sheets together as if the ghosts were holding hands.

Luminaries are great to put on your porch, around the house, or leading to the front door. Draw out a Halloween design or face on a brown or orange paper bag and cut out the design. Stand the paper bag up, fill with sand, place a tea light in the bottom of the bag, secure in the sand and light.

For a spooky window shadow, and one of the easiest-to-make Halloween party ideas, cut out a large piece of white tissue paper, poster board or even white garbage bag. Make sure it fits the window perfectly. Take black construction paper and sketch out a witch, ghost, mummy, etc. Cut the figure out and glue or tape it to the center of the white paper. Hang in the window, so the black cut-out is against the window glass, facing outdoors. Turn a lamp on near the window. From the outside of the house, it'll look like there's a creepy shadow in the window.

Decorate the shelves in your house or the party area with specimen jars, old clear glass bottles and jars filled with odd or creepy looking things. Label the jars with the names of potion ingredients, such as: Beetle Eyes (pepper balls, black beads or poppy seeds), Eyes of Blind Dogs (cocktail onions), Bloodworms (cooked spaghetti in water dyed with red food coloring), Owl Liver (chopped canned mushrooms), Gecko Skin (pickled ginger), Pig Pituitary (capers), Fingers (Vienna sausages), Brains (shredded red cabbage or sour kraut). These jars are fun to make and probably the most popular Halloween party ideas.

For added fun, you can leave the labels blank on a few of the jars and have the kids make them up.

To make a cool Halloween tree, select an appropriate tree, cut out lots of different-sized bats from black paper, make mini tissue paper ghosts, and hang with clear thread from the branches. Drape the tree with Christmas lights, and spread spider webs. The Halloween tree can also serve as a great backdrop for a colorful pumpkin display.

Make your own Halloween stamps with potatoes and Halloween cookie cutters (such as ghosts, pumpkins, witches, etc.) First, cut a potato in half. Then press a cookie cutter into one of the halves. Cut the potato along the outside edge of the cutter. When you remove the cutter, voila, you'll have a cool Halloween stamp. Dip the potato stamp into an ink pad and press it onto the tablecloth, napkin or gift bags.

Finally, here's one of the best Halloween party ideas for decorating your yard. Transform your bushes into "boo-shes"! Paint a ghost on the lower half of a white sheet and cover with it an entire bush. Connect the sheet to the boosh with clothes pins or string.

*Lights: One of the most important Halloween party ideas for lighting effects is a neon Black Light. The glowing effect is mesmerizing.

Also replace the regular white light bulbs with black and orange bulbs and use this blinking strobe light inside a pumpkin or skull.

*Sound Effects: Scatter a few old portable tape decks, CD players, etc around the house and yard. Beforehand, record your own spooky sounds with an "old-fashioned" tape recorder, or by using your computer and microphone. (There's a "Sound Recorder" program in your Accessories > Entertainment folder.)

*Mist: Making artificial fog is also one of the best Halloween party ideas. You can even make it on your own. Fill a large bucket with water and then add dry ice. There should be enough water to cover the dry ice, and the proportions should be 2 parts water to 1 part dry ice. Warmer water will create thicker smoke, but it will disappear quickly. Cooler water will create thinner smoke but it will linger for a longer period of time. (Here's a great link to find out where dry ice is sold nearest to you...).

"Bone-Breaker" Activities

*Pumpkin Carving and Decorating: This is one of the most popular Halloween party ideas. Give each child a small pumpkin and help them carve out their own special designs. Obviously, parental supervision and assistance is necessary for kids of all ages. But this is a great icebreaker as it has the kids engrossed for quite a while. Instead of carving, you can also provide paint, brushes, glue, wobbly eyes, yarn for hair, stickers, magic markers, etc., and let the kids decorate their own pumpkins and take them home.

*Jack-O-Lantern Balloons: Have the kids create Jack-O-Lantern balloons by drawing with magic markers all sorts of creative designs on black and orange balloons.

*Lolly-Ghosts: Have each kid take a lollypop, wrap it in white cloth and secure it with a rubber band as the bottom of the candy. Then have them color and design their lolly-ghosts.

*Flashlight Ghosts: Get a bunch of inexpensive flashlights and have the kids cut out a circular piece of black paper that fits exactly over the light. Then have them cut out designs of a ghost or witch from the center of a black circle and tape or glue the cutout circle onto the flashlight. These are great favors and can also be used in one of the hunts that are described in the games and activities section.

*Trick or Treat Bags: You'll need white or orange pillowcases, fabric paint, glue, plastic jewels, and Halloween stamps. Have the kids decorate their pillowcase trick or treat bags with the colored stamps and jewelry. This is one of the most useful Halloween party ideas because it can be used to hand out the favors at the end of the party AND for trick-or-treating later on.

*Face Painting and Tattoos: You can ask one of the older kids or parents to do some face painting while the kids are waiting for everyone to arrive. Here's an AWESOME selection of face paints...

*Baked Bones: Cut bone shapes out of Shrinky Dink plastic and have the kids decorate their bones with colored pencils. You can then bake them in the oven and put magnets on the back for a cool favor to give out.

*Sticky Fun: When the guest start arriving, give each one a pack of 10 Halloween stickers. The object is to get rid of all your stickers by sticking them on the other guests (without them noticing).

Food Ideas

For a murky graveyard cake, bake a rectangular cake and before decorating it, make a hole in its center by pressing a cup into it. Pull out the "core", and place an empty plastic cup right side up in the hole. Make sure that it's flush with the surface of the cake. You can tighten it in place with pieces of the "core". Frost the cake and decorate it like a graveyard. Use Milano type Peperidge farm cookies for "tombstones", marshmallows for ghosts, marshmallow bats and spiders, Tootsie rolls for little logs and branches, etc.

Now comes the fun part (and one of the coolest Halloween party ideas!) Place a candle and one or two small pieces of dry ice in the plastic cup that's in the center of the cake. Light the candle and pour a little hot tap water into the cup until you get a lot of mist as you bring out the cake!!

You can also make Witch Hat ice cream cones. First, frost one side of a wafer cookie and set it aside. Fill a cone to the rim with ice cream and turn it upside down onto a wafer cookie. This can be a great activity for the kids to make themselves.

Another one of the coolest Halloween party ideas for treats is the Frozen Navel: Cut off the tops of navel oranges and hollow them out leaving a thick shell. Cut faces into the oranges (you can even do this as a contest or party activity). Pack chocolate ice cream into the orange, without letting any ice cream come out of the eyes, nose or mouth. Cut a small hole in the top and put the top back onto the orange. Put a piece of cinnamon stick in the hole to make it look like a pumpkin stem. Freeze for at least three hours.

Let yourself go wild with your Halloween party ideas for food and you're sure to come up with some original (and grotesque) foods.

You can turn your buffet table into a coffin by using sturdy cardboard, paint it black, and fill it with ghoulish goodies. Use this great smoking cauldron as a centerpiece for an awesome effect.

Also, make sure to label the foods so that everyone knows exactly what they're chewing on. Kids love it when you give everyday food scary names.

*Handburgers: Help the kids trace their hands on a beef patty and then cut it in the shape of their hands. Use the excess meat to make more patties.

*Mummy Dogs: Hot dogs wrapped with breadstick dough and two dots of mustard for the eyes.

*Spiders Dipped in Blood: Slice hot gods with a knife from both ends to almost the middle several times. Boil and the ends curl up to look like spider legs.

*Bloody Cat Soup: Take a ketchup bottle, peel off the label, write a new one with a black cat and stick it on.

*Worm Casserole: Mix cooked egg noodles and spaghetti with butter and grated cheese. Bake until the cheese melts. Sprinkle with bread crumbs (dirt) and bake again until toasted.

*Frankenstein's Eyeballs: Mix flour, water and cheddar cheese to make a dough-like substance. Roll it into a ball and press an olive with the pimento facing up. Pull the dough up around the edge of the olive and bake until brown.

*Skewered Eyeballs: Peel hardboiled eggs and cut each in half. Remove the yolks from the eggs and mash the yolks with mayonnaise. Fill the egg-white halves with the yolk and mayonnaise mixture. Press an olive into the middle with the pimiento "looking" up. Sprinkle the yolk and mayonnaise mixture with red pepper flakes and then, for a great added effect, stab each "eyeball" with a toothpick.

*Creepy Jell-O: Use Laytex gloves to make different colored Jell-O hands. Another awesome Jell-O idea is to use a full-face party mask as the mold. Plug any holes in the mask and spray the inside with non-stick spray. Depending on the size of the mask, mix up a couple boxes of Jell-O (usually about 4) with about a 1/4 cup of milk to give it a more realistic look. Add some Gumi worms to the mixture and refrigerate. When the Jell-O has set, carefully remove the mask. This is an awesome desert that the kids'll love!

*Hands Floating in Blood: Fill several Laytex gloves with water or Sprite and freeze. Float them in a big bowl of red punch. This'll chill the drink while freaking everybody out.

*Cat Litter: Mix Grapenuts with powdered sugar and pour the cat litter into a real litter box. Add Tootsie rolls or squished brownies and stir in with a cat litter scoop.

*Spider Oreos: Separate the two parts of an Oreo cookie, put three strands of licorice across the cookie and put the top of the cookie back on. Use two dots of icing to anchor red hots or M&Ms for the eyes.

*Dracula's Teeth with Witch's Blood: Nachos and cheese. Add green food coloring to the melted cheese for a great effect.

*Caramel Apples: Get caramel apple wraps from your local grocery store and have the kids wrap the caramel sheet around the apple and stick in the stick. So simple!

*Krispie Eyes: Make Rice Krispie Treats (directions are on the cereal box). Form them into small balls, add an M&M or other small round candy for the iris, and dot the candy with frosting or gel for the pupil.

*Candy Hands: Fill transparent Laytex gloves with caramel corn and tie at the top.

Favors

You can call your favor bags "Boogie Bags" and use white plastic bags decorated by the kids. You can also use the pillow case trick-or-treat bags as described in the bone-breaker activities above, Halloween cellophane, the traditional plastic pumpkin buckets, and lots of other creative ideas.

Stuff the bags with Halloween pencils, Halloween erasers, scull key chains, ghost erasers, tattoos, glow-in-the-dark items, and lots more great Halloween trinkets which can be found everywhere during the Halloween season.

Games and Activities

Take a look at this complete page filled with the coolest Halloween party ideas for games. You'll also find several VERY important tips to help you survive (and enjoy) party time.

Take your coolest party ideas, add a few colorful photos and you've got a "PARTY TALE ".

Many of the ideas you'll find on this site have been sent to us by people around the world. These people are an inspiration to this site, helping make this site an inspiration to others.

Once your party is over, we'd love for you to send us your own PARTY TALE and we'll create your very own theme party page and photo gallery that's hosted on our site! (Family, friends and just about anybody will be able to find inspiration from YOUR CHILD'S birthday party AND comment on YOUR ideas!)

Here's a chance for you to peek at other people's Halloween birthday PARTY TALES and find even more ideas:

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