Halloweenland Party

Welcome to Halloweenland, our vintage haunted trail meets fall festival fever dream. Maybe it was from seeing the oversaturation of commercial Halloween items on the market or maybe it was from the generally icky state of the world, but for Halloween 2022, we were feeling drawn to nostalgia. Chris & I have lot of memories attached to the holiday from building a kitschy haunted woods in my parents’ backyard to going into a Halloween store after dinner on our first date. We wanted a party filled with all the things we love about the holiday and the season. Our rules were simple: use what we have in storage or build it ourselves to create homegrown magic like the Halloweens of yesteryear.

The Invitation

For the invite, Heather painted a folksy board game with the party details on it to hint at what party goers might expect at Halloweenland. Rather than mass producing it, Chris turned it into a video to distribute to guests digitally.

The ACTIVITIES

Halloweenland: The Game

After 15 years of Halloween parties, it’s safe to say we have a lot of decorations. With a goal of avoiding new purchases, we needed a way to use the eclectic mix of zombies, witches, and other ghouls in a way that made sense. Enter Halloweenland, a life-sized board game that allowed us to group the decorations into various thematic scenes that players would move through encountering spooks and treat stations along the trail. Follow the link above to see step by step on the build and game play progression.

A headsone shaped board with bean bags on top on a leaf covered lawn with a large tree and a table in the background — Halloween Cornhole

In addition to the board game, we set up other activities to give a fall festival feel to the event and provide stations where folks could play throughout the evening. We created a custom Halloween themed cornhole set complete with headstone style boards with ghost and skull beanbags.

An upright board painted with a black cat and moon with holes cut out for faces — Photo Prop

Party goers are always looking for photo opportunities, so we created a classic face-in-hole board painted with a black cat and full moon using leftover materials from other projects.

A white pumpkin painted with a skeleton face sitting on a table with craft supplies — Pumpkin Painting

We added a table with markers, paint pens, and baskets filled with a selection of small pumpkins for party-goers to have a make-and-take souvenir. We chose pumpkin painting because it is safer and less messy than carving.

The DECOR

Corn stalks on a porch — Corn Stalks

Though most of the decoration was centered around the Halloweenland game, we added some autumnal touches like corn stalks with burlap ribbon to the porch columns.

A tree filled with round paper lanterns in various sizes — Paper Lanterns

We added some paper lanterns to a spooky old maple tree as a focal point for the event. Paper lanterns are one of those items that we tend to purchase post-holiday when on markdown since they store easily and aren’t relegated to any particular theme. They’re an inexpensive way to transform a space, but paper fans are also an easy DIY with similar impact.

A view of an autumnal front porch from a distance with paper lanterns in the foreground — Bunting

We kept the color palette classic orange and black to tie the amalgamation of spooky scenery together. To continue chasing the Halloween nostalgia, we added some vintage-look bunting to the porch.

A front porch at night illuminated with orange and purple lights — Lighting

Lighting really sets the nighttime Halloween scene. We swapped the porch lights for flickering lightbulbs, added orange and purple string lights to outline the porch, used color changing LED floodlights to spotlight certain areas, illuminated the path with lanterns on shepherd’s hooks, and added battery-operated candles on all tables.

A still life scene of a pumpkin on an old scales, mums, and a vase filled tray with persimmon branches — Pumpkins

We grew over 200 pounds of pumpkins in the farmhaunts garden during the 2022 growing season. We used them throughout the house, porch, and yard to celebrate the bounty of the growing season. See a video of our seed to harvest over on social media.

The Music

We started the party much earlier than usual at 4pm to give guests with kids an opportunity to visit and also to allow folks a chance to see the game in the daylight. That meant we needed hours of tunes. We cycled through several of our playlists from Rock N Roll to Indie to Full Moon.

The Menu

Again leaning into the nostalgia, we aimed for classic recipes and fair style food instead of inventing new menu items. With the party being a come-and-go affair, we aimed for bite-sized snacks that folks could grab and carry with them as they played the lawn games.

Candy corn elotes

Mini veggie corn dogs

Pretzels and beer cheese

Autumn leaf hand pies

Autumn leaf tortilla chips and salsa

Apple cider donut cakelets

Veggies and pumpkin dip

Pumpkin-shaped cheese ball

Caramel apples

My grandmother’s lime punch served in a cauldron

Whiskey cider punch