Tis the season to get SPOOKY!!!

The Dancing Queen is also the Queen of Halloween. She has always loved Halloween and over the years, our party got better and better. Recently, we have taken to moving the Halloween spectacular into the garden, and our house is now known amongst the tick or treater's as the Spookiest house in the village - which means we tend to draw quite a crowd. I thought I would share some of the things we do with you early on, in case you want to borrow the ideas.

This is our house - only joking, but how good would this be for a Halloween party? We spotted it on holiday last year. It stands on the beach in Dinard. I found out recently that it is reputed to be the house that Hitchcock based the motel in "Phsyco" on - I can see why. I think you could make it really really spooky!


I always used to carve the pumpkins, but then the Halloween queen wanted to do them last year. Now when I did them, they had eyes and jaggedy teeth - look what happens when she is let loose on the internet and then given a sharp knife!!

If you type in "Pumpkin Stencils" on google, you get spoiled for choice. She claims that they are very easy to do!!

As well as bobbing for apples, I also create a Witches cauldron that contains the chopped up body parts of a dead pirate!! This also contains a few treats, and the braver kids can dip into this for their treats. I use my grandads old pantion, and fill it with boiled spaghetti (intestines) a small cabbage (head) 2 hard boiled eggs (eyes) and chopped up carrots (fingers) I tape a black bin bag with a hand sized slit over the top so that the "dippers" cannot see in. I usually tell a bit of a story about the witch and the pirate (which I make up as I go along, but it is always very gruesome!)

We hang a collection of large rubber bats, spiders and snakes (mostly bought in gift shops over the years on the numerous school trips the kids on when they had £2 burning a hole in their pocket!) in places where the visitors will brush against them, and the Halloween queen made a huge web last year from crochet chain stitch and cheap white acrylic wool - we place this in the gateway so that the trick or treaters have to fight their way through it to get to us.

The kids decorate the garden with "ghosts" that are made using the young mans footballs (for heads ) wrapped in my decorating dust sheets and pinned up in trees, across the fence - dangling from the trampolene etc. We light the whole garden up with flickering candles and also make hot dogs for the trick or treaters using those disgusting "smart price" tinned sausages and finger rolls - with ketchup. The kids love 'em!!

We also make a few graves for the garden using this Martha Stewart template and we have used this Martha template to cut out hundreds of mice (gives the kids something to do!!) which we blu-tak all over the place. They look really effective. I really love Martha Stewart - the old jailbird! We save our Halloween decs every year in a box in the loft now, like we do our Christmas decorations and I usually buy the tacky supermarket decorations/plates/themed glasses etc when they are heavily reduced after the event to add to the collection.
I hope I have given you a few ideas. xxx