Today I’m sharing some unique free Halloween decor prints. These zombie composers definitely have a back story… every year I …
It’s time to share my annual All Hallow’s Eve dinner party! I always post the photos from the previous year’s …
As many of you know I host an annual All Hallow’s Eve dinner party. It’s a formal dinner, and guests …
Each Fall my husband and I go all out on a big All Hallow’s Eve dinner party. We have been throwing this party for nearly a decade, and every year on the blog we show the photos from the previous year’s dinner. This year’s bash was last weekend, and if you follow us on Instagram you might have caught some sneak peeks. We are still washing up all the dishes, but I’m taking a quick break so I can share these photos from last year’s Mad Laboratory themed party.
My annual All Hallow’s Eve dinner party is coming up this weekend, but I took a quick break from preparations because, as per tradition, it is time to share the photos from last year’s party with you all! My husband loves throwing this party, and I have a great time working together with him on it. The only bad thing about it — we can’t invite as many people as we’d like. It is a formal sit-down dinner and we run out of essentials like chairs, plates and table space (even though our table is over 30-feet long!) at 34 guests, but I truly wish all of you could be there.
The theme for this party was Ghost Music. Sort of ambiguous I know, but I think it is one of the best themes we’ve had — unique but there was so much good, spooky stuff to work with. Behold…
So we totally wallpapered our wall with old sheet music for this party. I’m not going to lie, this project took a really long time, but we did it about a week in advance when things were still fairly low stress so it was manageable. We put a piece of blue painter’s tape on the four corners of each sheet and stuck it up on the wall… very low tech. We started at a corner and overlapped the sheets collage style. We did use nearly an entire roll of tape on this project. My darling grandfather collected all the sheet music at garage sales, which meant we created a big wow moment for very little money. I was so in love with how the wall looked covered in music I was seriously tempted to keep it. We did eventually take it down, and the tape left absolutely no mess.
We usually serve cheeses and drinks as the guests arrive and mingle. This year we swapped out our serving table for an old organ. We found our organ at a local thrift store, and since it didn’t work we figured there would be no harm in serving drinks off it. Superdad rigged up his iPod so it almost seemed like that the organ was playing on its own.
Last week I sent out the invitations for our annual All Hallow’s Eve Dinner Party. Since I never have the party pictures ready to share before Halloween, I usually don’t post them on our blog until the following year, but last year Aimee leaked a sneak peak. Well, the time has come to share our 2011 Blood Bar themed party! (Actually if you follow our posts over at One Charming Party, we shared some of these pics a couple weeks ago).
A half-dug grave and coffin in the front yard hinted at the party’s blood theme.
Although red isn’t traditionally a Halloween color, we used a color palette of black, white and crimson to tie in with the theme.
Every year we line the dinner table with clusters of drippy candles; yet the ghostly appearance and eerie atmosphere never get old. Isn’t it cool how the spooky, candlelit shadows dance across our guests faces? I seriously LOVE this party!
We had an elaborate blood bar for mixing Vampire Cocktails available as guests arrived. We displayed three chilling drink recipes — the Hemoglobpolitan, Stabbery Daiquiri and Gin & Tourniquet — and invited guests to help themselves.
Shhhh! Don’t tell Bettijo I’m posting this… Okay, so, I stopped by Bettijo’s last week to drop off a few …
So every year we throw a big Halloween dinner party. It is becoming our tradition to share photos from last year’s party as we’re in full swing with planning for this year’s party. We are excited that Hostess With the Mostess just featured last year’s party here.
You might remember the great invitation debate I posted about last year? Here are the winning invites:
Probably my favorite part of last’s years party was the fun outdoor Halloween decor that greeted the guests. Superdad had a fun idea to hang a sheet in the front window and then use a projector to show a silent movie — we played snippets from the old, black-and-white Dracula movie on a loop, and it was so cool to watch from the street and from inside the house. Also loved the warning messages on the luminaries (they are vinyl cutouts stuck onto regular, brown paper bags).
Inside the house we had a Spooky Specimens treat table complete with Box Jellyfish Tentacles and Brazilian Wandering Spider Eggs for guests to nibble on while they waited for dinner to begin.
Lots more photos and free printables after the jump!
So tonight is our Halloween Dinner Party and I’m in the midst of all the decorating — things are looking …