Every year, Stuart and I throw a Halloween costume party the Saturday before Halloween. This year, since we have been so busy with the move and the new jobs, I decided to scale it back and have a low-key pumpkin-carving dinner party instead.
To be fair, the idea was not my own but "borrowed" from Apartment Therapy. (We even did the sweet potato/ potato bar for dinner.)
What a success!
Here's what's involved:
1) Decorations- I did not go over board with decorations. Just a simple skull center piece on the table, a black tablecloth, some orange bowls for the sides, a few small, plastic spiders on the plates and napkins, a spider web bowl for the Halloween candy (a must!) and some plastic bats on the windows. Took me no time at all to set-up but still made the evening feel festive (if that's the right word?).
2) Pumpkins for carving- We did one large pumpkin per couple. Everything was set-up before anyone arrived. I divided our kitchen counter into work spaces and laid out newspaper under each pumpkin. Each work space had a pen for marking, a knife for cutting and a bowl for scooping out the pumpkin. An iPad was passed around to give everyone a chance to look up pumpkin carving ideas on the internet.
3) Dinner- We chose to go with a mostly Mexican-inspired sweet potato bar consisting of sweet potatoes, potatoes, vegetarian chili, sauteed mushrooms, chopped green onions, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, blue cheese, a variety of hot sauces, garlic bread and salad. Everything was put out separately and everyone was instructed to make up their own combinations of ingredients.
