Halloween House

It was a long time coming, a little planning, and a lot of hard work, but I pulled off another successful event for Mr. Max.

So let's start from the beginning. I ordered a "Happy Halloween from The Blockers" banner to hang out in the yard. I put some scarecrows and fake mums out on the porch and in the yard (the kids picked them). That handled outside, which was pretty easy. I had also ordered some ghosts that hug the trees but they didn't make it out in time. The leaves were just being finished up in the yard when the first guest arrived.

These are pictures of my living room before I started transforming the house for the party.

I started off simple by gutting the room of most of the furniture and fixing up the mantle complete with floating candy corn candles and spider web scarf. And then I rearranged the furniture that remained to clear out space for little tables and chairs.

Then came my favorite part of the room decor - the giant spider on the ceiling! And boy was it labor intensive, well more than I wanted it to be. I thought it was one piece that you blow up, instead it was several pieces and an hour later . . . .

I had originally ordered a giant piece of black carpet to cover the floor, but the delivery date was going to be too late. Gigi had a brilliant idea to use felt; it was 50% off at the fabric store and it was 1/4 of the price of the rug I had ordered. Yea, Gigi! It was perfect after I made the right cuts. And then I put the tables and chairs out. They were blue and red, but I just covered the tabletops and kept it pushing. Then I put the remaining furniture in places for parents to sit. Maddy thought the party was for her. She was very early and already seated when the magician arrived.

Each table was set with Halloween tableware, a Halloween bowl filled with individual chip bags, a Halloween tray filled with hot dog condiment packets, and a witch hat cooler filled with assorted juice boxes. I realized after the tables were set that I didn't need those cups!

The entry hallway had spider webs in the doorway, tombstones against the walls, a gift table with an old ghost pinata, and Max's Halloween book (Max and Ruby is a cartoon about rabbits). The star rail had sparkly pumpkin garland running down it, there were decorative gourds, with little figurines and a family photograph in the hallway also. The bathroom door was marked with a pumpkin bucket and there were Halloween hand towels in there and a Halloween soap pump.

The bar was shielded with spider webs too. So no children would be tempted to climb up there and grab at the bottles or turn the faucet on like my little ones do. I had intended to have bear and wine available for the adults but I got so busy that I didn't have time to go buy the wine and I think my husband is the only person in the South who drinks Coors Light.

Of course there were balloons everywhere. Thank you Javon for helping me go through those very quickly. We didn't even pass out and still had enough energy for a 1 am trip to Wal-Mart.

This was the dining room during the process and then after. It was set up with food and snacks for the adults. The menu was chips and salsa, tequila lime chicken wings, white bean chicken chili, sodas and water. In addition to the hot dogs and chips.






And then the guests started to arrive . . .