Our creepy Halloween party tips will help you add some mischievous fun to the occasion. From haunting Halloween decorations, to Ghoulish costumes and food and sweets to gross out your guests, you will find all you need for an eerie celebration.

Don’t pull the curtains, turn off the lights and hide behind the sofa all evening – join the spooky fun!

1 – Creepy Halloween decorations

The first thing to consider is the decorations. You’ll be amazed at the range of accessories you can buy- from glow in the dark pumpkins to fake cobwebs with spiders.

Halloween balloons are a quick, easy and relatively cheap way to create impressive decorations. The illoom balloons will glow in the dark and create a perfect Halloween mood. Choose from orange illooms, pumpkin illooms or the flashing ghost illoom balloon or mix all three. You can scatter your balloons on the floor or tie them up by your front door. You can even inflate them with helium for full floating Halloween lights.

Mounted on a balloon stick, they will also make an unusual trick or treat accessory.

Remember that no Halloween decorations are complete without a pumpkin.  They’re surprisingly easy to carve, just spoon out the pulp and seeds and cut out eyes, nose and mouth. Add a tea light and you’re away!

2 – Ghoulish costumes, make up and accessories

While shops are full of Halloween costumes for children and adults of all ages, you can easily create your own zombie style look with a few old clothes and a bit of make up.

Fake blood is easy to use and surprisingly realistic. See on the right an example of what you can achieve in a few minutes with white and black make up and fake blood. Rip and stain some old clothes and that’s it.

Please note – If you are using fake blood apply it at the end. You might also want to spend a bit more and buy quality make up as some cheaper alternatives can stain badly.

Remember that a few well chosen accessories will finish off your look. Wands, plastic weapons, devil horns will all compliment your costume.

3 – Spooky Halloween food 

Halloween is the perfect time to be creative with party food. With a little imagination, it’s easy to create a creepy menu that will put your guests in a spooky mood.

You can use food colourings to turn ordinary foods into devilish delicacies. Just imagine blue mash potatoes, green orange juice or red fairy cakes – just don’t blame me if your guests refuse to eat!

For more freaky food ideas check out our Halloween food for a spooky mood post. If you want to try a more conventional dish, why not prepare our pumpkin soup recipe?

4 – Crazy-scary Halloween sweets

Halloween wouldn’t be complete without sweets. Our range of novelty chocolates are out of the ordinary sweets that are sure to make everyone lose their appetite. Creepy chocolate spiders, chocolate maggots or chocolate slugs are all treats (if you can call them treats) that are sure to gross out your guests. They will also make perfect take home gifts for children if you are throwing a party.

If you don’t want to put your guests off chocolate for ever, why not try rock lollies, sherbet flying saucers or chocolate coins?

For more Halloween party tips, check out our A Tricky Problem for a Halloween Party article.

Tatty Teddy is ready to trick or treat! The first range of Halloween Me to You bears has arrived in stock and will make cute seasonal keepsakes for all Me to You fans.

It includes a Small Me to You Bear with Pumpkin and a Small Witch Me to You Bear, both bears are 4″ tall and are sold on black display stands with the greeting “Happy Halloween”, they retail at £4.99.

> View our full range of Me to You Bears

> View our full range of Halloween balloons and gifts

Whether you’re planning a sit down meal or a party buffet, with a little thought, you can soon create a creepy menu that will put your guests in a spooky mood.

Creepy main courses

Ghoul-ash is an obvious choice but you can also use a bit of imagination with other dishes. For instance, spaghetti meatballs can become worms and eyeballs – lovely thought! Check out our baked eyeballs in bloodsauce recipe for inspiration.

It’s also amazing what a little bit of food colouring can achieve. Ever fancied dishing up green mash potato? Just don’t blame me if your guests refuse to eat anything.

Devilish desserts

Dessert is the easiest course to turn deliciously devilish. Decorate fairy cakes with black icing and spider’s webs, serve up jelly with floating eyeballs (the sweetshop kind, please), drip blood red raspberry sauce over ice cream or you could even serve up one of our cans of chocolate worms or chocolates spiders. If you want to make your own treats with the kids check out our Halloween cupcake recipe and spooky Halloween spiders.

Spooky drinks

Then there are the drinks. For the adults, mixing orange juice with Blue Caracao delivers an interestingly green punch that could easily be mistaken for witches brew. But watch out, it can be equally potent!

For the kids, supermarkets sell brightly coloured fizzy pops. However you might want to check out the ingredients and additives or you could end up with some very hyper monsters at your Halloween party.

More freaky Halloween recipes

For a more conventional menu why not try to cook an easy pumpkin soup?

You can also check out Netmums Halloween party food section for more devilish delights that are easy to make with the kids.

Even if you just do the front door and hallway area, your house is sure to be a hit with trick or treaters.

If you want to keep it simple then standard orange and black balloons are a quick and easy way to set the Halloween mood and if you want something a bit more special check out our Halloween balloons.

This year’s additions to the range include:

• Large Haunted Pumpkin Balloon – a striking bubble balloon with an eerie Halloween scene (pictured left)
• Large Kooky Bat Balloon – A fun bat shaped balloon with blood thirsty sharp teeth
• Skull and cross bones balloons – Perfect to change a room’s atmosphere!

While our fun pumpkin balloons are rather popular, no Halloween decorations would be complete without the obligatory pumpkin glowing in the window.

I ‘ve been told that real pumpkins are surprisingly easy to carve, just spoon out the pulp and seeds, and carefully cut out eyes, nose and mouth with a sharp knife, taking care not to cut yourself. Add a tea light and you’re away!

Maybe I should try and carve my own pumpkin this year!

For Halloween party tips, check out our article A Tricky Problem for a Halloween Party.

Guaranteed to have kids and grown ups screaming with delight!

This balloon looks horrific from all angles and is made from transparent non-allergenic material. This creepy eyeball balloon is a long lasting helium balloon that will stay inflated and fresh for up to four weeks, for long lasting spooky effect! £15.99.

For those who don’t have the time or the inclination to spend hours carving pumpkins, this Large Pumpkin Balloon might just do the trick. Printed all over with a picture of an illuminated pumpkin, this striking balloon measures 55 cm (22″), has smooth seams like a beach ball and looks good from all angles. It is made from transparent non-allergenic plastic – perfect for hospital deliveries. This long lasting bubble balloon will stay inflated for up to four weeks. £15.99

Check out out web site for more Halloween balloons.

The quantities are very generous so it will be just right if you are hosting a Halloween party. This recipe is also good for kid’s Birthday parties.

The bravest Mums might attempt it with a group of kids and give each child a bag of cookies to take home.

Halloween cookies ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup of margarine
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 2 cups of smooth peanut butter
• 3 teaspoons of baking powder
• 7 cups of oatmeal
• 3/4 cup of chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup of pecans nuts, chopped
• 3/4 cup of coloured chocolate coated sweets like Smarties

Preparation:

Beat together eggs, margarine, sugars, vanilla and peanut butter in a large bowl until smooth.

In a separate bowl, mix together the baking powder and oats. Mix into peanut butter mixture. Add chocolate chips and pecans and stir well until the mixture is perfectly blended.
Place large spoonfuls of dough at regular intervals on non-stick baking tray. Flatten each cookie into a round shape with the back of a spoon. Press the Smarties on top of the cookies (that was my children’s favourite part of the recipe).

Bake at 180C, 350F for 10-12 minutes or until cooked. Allow cooling for 5 minutes on backing sheet before removing.

This Halloween recipe makes 2 to 3 dozen large cookies – plenty for little (and big) monsters to enjoy!

Halloween Witch’s tip: if the dough seems too moist, add 1/2 to 1 cup all-purpose flour until it reaches the right consistency.

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Stuck for a unique Halloween gift idea? Why not try sending Halloween Balloons (delivered filled with helium to the address of your choice) or some Creepy Chocolate spiders from Big Fat Balloons?

Ingredients for our Halloween cupcake recipe:
(Filling)

• 8 ounces (200g) of softened cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup of caster sugar
• Yellow and red food colouring

(Cupcake dough)

• 8 ounces (200g) of margarine
• 8 ounces (200g) of caster sugar
• 4 eggs size 3
• 6 ounces (150g) of self raising flour
• 2 ounces (50g) of cocoa powder

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 180C, 350F.

Prepare cupcake mix as follows:
Cream the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, beat in the eggs – one at a time, adding a little flour with each.
Gently fold in the remaining flour and cocoa powder.

To make filling:
Blend in the cream cheese, egg and sugar. Add 2 drops of yellow food colouring and 1 drop of red food colouring. Add more colouring if necessary to reach the perfect shade of orange.

Finish your Halloween cupcakes:
Fill cupcake liners half full with cupcake mixture and place 1 teaspoon of filling at the centre of each. As the cupcakes bake, the dough will rise around the filling. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy those delicious cupcakes and Happy (or should I say scary?) Halloween!

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Stuck for a unique Halloween gift idea? Why not try sending Halloween Balloons (delivered filled with helium to the address of your choice) or some Creepy Chocolate spiders from Big Fat Balloons?

My children (2 ½ and 3 ½) loved making these Halloween spiders (result pictured here). They particularly enjoyed eating the spiders’ legs first and waving them at me while shouting with delight “Look Mummy, my spider’s got no legs!”. They laughed even more when I pretended to be scared!

Ingredients to make Halloween Spiders:

• 1 Packet of mini digestive biscuits or chocolate chip cookies
• 1 pack of marzipan (I like pre-rolled marzipan best as blocks can be difficult to lay out thin! You might require more marzipan if you want to make lots of spiders. We only made four spiders with a small pack)
• Liquorice rolls (from a sweet shop or supermarket) – unrolled and chopped in 1 3/4 inch pieces (you can unroll the liquorice strands and chop them in advance if you are making those Halloween spiders with smaller children – older children will enjoy doing it themselves)

Preparation:

Roll the marzipan out with a rolling pin and cut out 1 ¾ inch circles of marzipan using a cookie cutter or the top of a small glass – the marzipan discs need to be a little larger than your biscuits.

Take one of your marzipan discs and fix 4 liquorice legs on each side, letting them hang out on the outside. Put a biscuit and marzipan disc on top and press gently to seal the sides. Don’t forget to make eyes for your spiders with small balls of marzipan or tiny pieces of liquorice.

It’s time to scare each other while eating your spiders!

Have a great Halloween party!

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Stuck for a unique Halloween gift idea? Why not try sending Halloween Balloons (delivered filled with helium to the address of your choice) or some Creepy Chocolate spiders from Big Fat Balloons?