Your Guide To Throwing The Perfect Halloween Bash

As the first major event of the holiday season, Halloween has nearly endless potential for memorable parties. Whether you're ready to tackle the task of throwing a Halloween party for the first time or you're looking for ways to revamp your annual bash, there are plenty of spooky details you can incorporate into your get-together.

Knowing how to execute these details is just as important as thinking of the ideas in the first place. Let's take a look at a few of the most important aspects of throwing a Halloween party so that you can put together a perfectly spooky bash for your family and friends.

Find the right recipes

No party is complete without some tasty treats. With ghosts and ghouls galore, Halloween offers a great opportunity to get creative with your party snacks. Of course, you'll need a couple of bowls of candy to get your guests into the Halloween spirit. Make the candies extra spooky by getting gummy body parts, like feet and eyes, or bugs, like worms and spiders.

To balance out the sweetness of the candy, be sure to have plenty of savory appetizers. If you want to keep it simple, offer cheese and crackers. Using cookie cutters shaped like bats and ghosts, you can create cheese slices that are a little spookier than normal. For something just slightly more involved, get a round of brie cheese and wrap it in one-inch strips of puff pastry to make it look like a mummified head. Stick it in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is warm and golden and the brie is gooey. Place two mini pepperonis inside two sliced olives to create the eyes and surround the round with crackers. You can find plenty more haunted recipes online that cover a wide range of difficulty levels for your savory snacks.

Desserts are often the star of a good Halloween party. You can use a trusted cupcake, cookie, or brownie recipe and then decorate them in any spooky way you choose. If you're hosting a kid's party, this is a good opportunity for a fun activity. Pre-bake your treats and then lay out the frosting, sprinkles, and other toppings to have them decorate their own treats.

You can apply this same idea with an ice cream buffet. Have a couple of ice cream flavors for the guests to choose from. Try to keep the flavors simple, as the toppings will be the star of this ice cream bar. As vanilla is the best selling ice cream flavor with 33% of sales and chocolate holds the number two spot with 19% of sales, these are good go-to flavors. Put classic ice cream toppings in jars or bowls and label them with a Halloween twist. Here are some of the best ways you can turn common toppings into haunted Halloween treats:

• Goblin Guts (Hot fudge)
• Dirt (Crushed Oreos)
• Rotted Teeth (Toffee pieces)
• Earwax (Caramel sauce)
• Bloody Eyeballs (Maraschino cherries)
• Spider Legs (Chocolate sprinkles)
• Oozing Brains (Crushed pineapples, tinted red with food coloring)
• Dead Skin (Coconut flakes)
• Crunchy Boogers (Chopped nuts)

With a little creativity, you can turn any average sweet into a spooky topping. You can get even grosser with the names for older kids, as they love to say that they're putting unsavory things on their food.

Purchase the perfect supplies

To ensure that your haunted treats stay off of your floors and furniture, you'll need the right supplies. Purchase plenty of themed plates and napkins for your savory snacks and have more than enough forks, spoons, and knives to go around. Remember to get drink cups as well. If you're serving a hot drink, such as mulled cider, you'll need heatproof cups in addition to classic plastic cups.

You'll also need dessert supplies for your spooky sweets. If you're putting together an ice cream bar, invest in dessert supplies such as ice cream cups and colored spoons. You could even get your dessert supplies customized with the name and year of the party or the colors of your party theme. It may also be a good idea to get to go cups or ice cream cups with lids so that your guests can take home leftover treats.

Set the spooky scene

While focusing on the smaller details -- like getting custom ice cream cups for your dessert supplies -- will certainly help solidify the Halloween mood, you'll need to set up some larger decorations as well. Start with some of the classics of this holiday, such as jack-o'-lanterns and fake spiderwebs. Have your family carve pumpkins together in advance to create the jack-o'-lanterns and then set them up on your front steps or porch to greet your guests as they come in. Drape your porch railings and every nook and cranny surrounding your home's entrance with spiderwebs to get your guests in an appropriately spooky mood.

Inside your home, go crazy with Halloween decorations. On this holiday, you have to go over-the-top with the decor to create the right atmosphere. Get balloons, paper bats and ghosts, fake spiders, tombstones, and more to adorn every room where the party will take place.

You can create the right mood lighting by using candles or lanterns. Scatter plenty of votives throughout the party and group pillars of different heights and sizes together. For extra drama, use a candelabra. This serves as a great Halloween decoration as well as a functional source of lighting.

The last step to setting the Halloween scene is putting on the right music. Create a party playlist with Halloween classics like "Thriller" and "Monster Mash." Be sure to put in more modern songs that have an eerie edge, such as Rihanna's "Disturbia," to give the playlist enough variety. If you don't feel confident in your playlist curation skills, try looking for Halloween playlists online. You can also play classic Halloween movies on the T.V. to get guests into the mood of the holiday and mute the volume so that it doesn't overwhelm the party.

Halloween is one of the most entertaining holidays for adults and children alike. Everyone can get into the holiday spirit by putting on a fun costume and indulging in some spooky goodies. By investing in the small details, like the dessert supplies and party playlist, you'll throw a party your guests will remember for years to come. Contact Frozen Dessert Supplies today to buy your party supplies and take the first step in bringing your Halloween bash together.