Your Halloween House Party Planning Checklist

Want to plan a Halloween house party, but the amount of work seems horrifying? Here’s our checklist to set the mood and get your home ready to party.

Candy and loot bags
Set out glass jars filled with different types of candies and mini scoops, and buy little custom bags from your favorite local craft store. Let guests fill their own goodie bags to take home.

Themed napkins, plates, utensils and tablecloths
Solid-colored or festively patterned disposable goods will make cleanup a breeze. Find a small business near you for Halloween-themed party favors, along with supplies in classic fall colors.

Serving dishes
Find cute Halloween-themed serving bowls, boards and platters. Tip: Plan which food you want to go on which platter and use Post-it notes to label them.

Punch bowl
Grab a spooky serving bowl and mix up a dose of punch that’s blood-red, ghoulish green, orange or black, and use dry ice to create an eerie mist over the surface.

Themed snacks and drinks
Try appetizers like chips and dip, ghost and pumpkin-shaped cookies or cupcakes topped with frosting that guests can decorate themselves. Look up creepy cocktail recipes online (the simpler the better) and buy ingredients. Make sure to have heatproof cups on hand if you’re serving anything hot.

Pumpkins and decorative gourds
Easily findable at your local grocery store, you can display these singly or in clusters at your Halloween house party. Try dressing up your pumpkins — spray them with metallic paint, use chalkboard paint to draw fun faces or write messages, or wrap them with a single horizontal strip of decorative burlap ribbon for a sophisticated touch.

Candles
Scatter either real fall-colored votive candles (but make sure they aren’t near anything flammable) or flameless candles throughout your home. Group pillars of varying heights and sizes together.

Photo: Courtesy of WAC Lighting

Ghostly furniture covers
Cover furniture with white sheets for a “haunted mansion” look. As an additional bonus, they’ll help protect your furniture from any spills that might occur.

Colored/themed lights
Buy red or purple lightbulbs and replace a few bulbs around the house to create atmosphere. Or, string up some of the creepy ghost, pumpkin and eyeball light strands from your favorite store’s holiday section. A new innovation called Colorscaping by WAC Lighting, available locally at Dial Electric Supply Co., Inc., allows you to create epic outdoor light scenes for any occasion. Learn more about Colorscaping here.

Fake cobwebs and spiders, paper bats and other decorations
Hang spooky decorations in the corners of your room for guests to discover or place them strategically around the house.

This post was last updated on October 27, 2023 from an original post published in 2019.