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Listen up, lazy Halloween costume
offenders: this year, there will be no drawing black
makeup rings around one’s eyes and calling oneself a
raccoon. There will be no toting a telephone in an effort
to pass oneself off as a telemarketer. There will be no carrying
around a beer and saying “I’m a college student.”
And there will certainly be no cutting-eye-holes-in-sheets
malarkey. Not on our watch.
How to motivate pals to put a little extra effort into their
costumes? Host a Halloween party with an awards show theme
and a Transylvanian twist. Welcome to the “The Spookies”,
a costume awards ceremony that’s equal parts V.I.P.
and R.I.P., blood-red carpet and all. [browse
our halloween costume category]
Hype Your Haunt
Choose halloween
invitations in a de rigeur creepy motif; classic bats,
witches and black cats always get the job done. Our owl
eyes box invitations add a heightened air of Fright Night
foreboding. Use your invitations to announce the Spookies,
to motivate guests to get creative (mention prizes!) and to
list your Spookies categories (Best Celebrity Impersonator,
Best Costume Made from Stuff that Was Lying Around the House,
Best Guy in a Dress, Best Costume Made Entirely of Tin Foil).
If there’s not enough room on the invitation itself,
include a printed insert with Spookies categories.
The Red Carpet Massacre
Set up a haunted halloween awards pre-show
red carpet scene in the front yard or entryway to welcome
Spookies “nominees”. Unfurl our plastic red carpet
and bedeck it with lifelike
black crows and tombstones. Go all out with a large
cardboard coffin with the lid slightly ajar to reveal
a bloody appendage. Use a metallic paint pen to scrawl on
the coffin in large block letters, “Guest Who Arrived
without a Costume, R.I.P.” Snap Polaroid pictures of
each guest’s grand entrance and tack them to a corkboard.
Stiff Competition
Once your halloween guests have arrived, give them some time
to mingle and check each other out before voting. Display
the corkboard with the pictures and spook it up with a mummy
garland and fake dripping blood. Set the scene for prime costume-judging
conditions: candlelight from creepy
candelabras, mist and horror movie sound effects. Position
gargoyle,
ghost and mummy decorations throughout the room. Use our
Gothtini
martini set to make eyeball martinis. Garnish supercold
gin and vermouth with radishes that have been peeled (leave
thin ribbons of skin to look like blood vessels) and stuffed
with pimento olives. Give guests something simple to munch
on like roasted pumpkin seeds and crudite arranged on a platter
to look like a skeleton with dip for brains. Create Spookies
ballots on the computer and present them on a table with a
collection of syringe and bat pens. Collect all of the ballots
and tally the votes in private. Be sure to record any funny
comments or honorable mentions for the ceremony.
“And the Spooky award goes to…”
Conduct the Halloween Spookies ceremony during dinner. Decorate
tables with black and orange papergoods and skeleton
table sprinkles, placing several
festive candy bowls filled with treats in the center.
Our
raven candy bowl is particularly chill-inducing with its
flapping bird wings and light-up red eyes. Place a little
gift at each place setting, like a Halloween
Pez dispenser, a Halloween
cracker or a loot
bag filled with candy and spider
rings. Serve Goop Soup (tomato soup with melted cheese
and crusty bread), salad and single servings of pumkin ravioli
presented in black
takeout containers. For dessert, serve cups of dirt crawling
with worms (vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, a thick layer
of crushed Oreos and gummy worms).
Designate an emcee or have guests
take turns presenting awards. Give
each winner a gold trophy and a prize. Try a haunted
mirror, a bat piñata
filled with candy, a pumpkin
carving set with a pumpkin,
or scary movies on DVD. Welcome rambling acceptance speeches,
extra points for staying in character. Trust us, once your
halloween guests get a taste for the glamour and glory that
is competitive costuming, they’ll be brainstorming ideas
for next year. |
