Halloween 2005

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).