You want to make your Halloween party memorable, right? But what to do? Well, there are many facets to putting together a great Halloween party from a theme to invites to food, music, games and more. Check out places like Halloween-Online.com and Halloween Costume Party for some ideas. The second site is a great how-to site that takes you step by step through planning a party including ideas for themes.

This year we are going to do Alice In Wonderland from the Tim Burton movie. We have our costumes planned and are coordinating with our friends that are coming so that no one will be dressed the same. We have ideas for decorations, music, food and games to play.

If you can plan well ahead of the party date then you'll have plenty of time to get everything done, ready and prepared for the big night!

Coming up with new and exciting treats for Halloween every year, year after year, can be a pain! Most of us don't have the time to spend making a lot of fancy treats for a Halloween party or just for our families. Some of us don't have the extra money either, with the economy the way it is now that the country is being run into the ground. So, we need some fast, inexpensive ways to make some tasty treats for the Halloween party this year and here's some ideas that I've come up with.

First, check out some websites that specialize in Halloween recipes like Wanda's Halloween Cookbook and HalloweenRecipes101.com for ideas. You may have some of the things that you need right in your kitchen and that can save you money. Check out some company websites like Libby, Pillsbury and others for printable coupons that will help at the check out, too. Find recipes that the kids can help with, if you have kids or that you might be able to get your hubby to help with. That will save you time by having helpers and it's also a project that can be a family time together.

If you are having a party and need some snack type treats, try making a Chex type party mix in large batches. If you check out some warehouse stores, you can get large boxes of cereal at low prices. Instead of making cookies from scratch, buy Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix and make a few dozen. You can freeze some for later, too.

By doing some digging both on line and off, you can find lots of ways to come up with tasty treats without spending an arm and a leg. And as we all know, we need those to use for props in our yard haunts anyway...

After coming across the website www.halloweengraveyard.com, we've decided to build an even bigger Halloween graveyard in the front yard this year. Haven't decided which type of graveyard fence to make yet, either the wrought-iron or gothic picket fence, will depend on our budget, but we want to start building next month. We want to have at least a dozen plus tombstones inside it.

We've collected quite an assortment of tombstones over the years, from cheap Wal-mart stuff to high end, specially made tombstones. We've always incorporated fog machines into the graveyard somehow. Either as low laying ground fog or just floating through the air. This years addition of a huge gate and fence will realy set it off!

We'll write more as things develope!

Halloween 2009 is over, everything was great, the parties went off without a hitch. And so starts another year of planning for the upcoming Halloween season once again. I don't know about you, but we get all these ideas of stuff that we want to do, things that we want to design and make for our haunt and the like and then forget to write them down. We do our best thinking on long drives so I've stuck a pad of paper and a pen in the glove box just for writing down ideas on the road.

The Halloween & Party trade shows are taking place now and in March. We'll be going and can report back with some of the cool new stuff that's going to be around this year for Halloween and what the costume manufacturers were showing for this year. We have friends that get us in because it's a professional show only. All I can say is that we lust after many things that we see there!

It's going to be a big, bad blow-out this Halloween, being our 25th wedding anniversary, too! We have people coming in from out of town for the week-end so we'll have a full house which is fine. The more, the scarier! Since Halloween is on Saturday this year we can have Halloween fun starting Friday night and go right through until Sunday morning.

Friday night schedule is a dinner party, a fancy costumed dance and cocktails. Not is that order, but cocktails, dinner and then a party and dance. We are setting up an 18 foot tent in the back yard with a complete sound system and computerized DJ. We want formal style costumes, fancy vampires, Gothy stuff. This one is just for our out of town friends, family and closest local friends.

Saturday night we will be all taking turns milling around the yard haunt, handing out candy and spooking the trick-or-treaters. When we finally send the last kid packing, we'll go back out to the tent for the big party for all friends, family and anyone else that drops by with an invite. We'll decorate the tent with gross, gory Halloween stuff and the costumes are whatever people want as long as they are wearing a costume.

Sunday morning will be a breakfast party for anyone still at the house. We'll do a big breakfast but on a Halloween theme starting with Bloody Marys, both virgin and non. Now we just have to start pulling all this together!!

I'm getting ideas for food, music and more at the following sites:
Halloween Music: Halloween Music 101
Halloween Food: Halloween Recipes 101
Halloween Decorations: Halloween Online Decorations section

I know I've said it before but using fog machines for Halloween just makes the night seem scarier, more sinister and just plain cooler! Every year new ones come out that do different things. We always incorporate them into our grave yard and what ever else we can think of.

This year, we are thinking about putting some up by our gates using a fog chiller, so the fog is roiling across and down the dirt road we live on. That should make it easy for people to find us! While there are fog machines that have chillers built in, we'll probably use old fashion chillers there since we can load them with dry ice and they'll last most of the night with one fill. Of course, we'll have to have someone check the fluid reservoirs once in a while.

You'll find the instructions for making your own fog chiller at GotFog.com, a great web site dedicated to fog machines and their usage. You won't find a better site!

It's never to early to start shopping for Halloween costumes and Costume Kingdom has a great selection and the best customer service we've found. You'll like the wide selection of costumes that suite any need and all the accessories that go with them! Last year we got my mom three Nun costumes and her and two friends went as singing Nuns! It was a hoot! These ladies are all in their 60's & 70's! They also used them for a talent show at their Methodist church that got a standing ovation!


They have this great gorilla costsume, the head on that thing hangs down to the waist and looks like a screaming, mad gorilla! We got that for my 17 year old nephew and he had a riot with it, scaring the girls at the Halloween parties he went to with his friends. He'll have that costume the rest of his life, it's that well made! I can picture him grown with kids of his own, chasing them around in it.

We got a beautiful set of Devil and his Lady costumes from them last year for us. They were just beautiful! The Lady Devil was all satin and lace and deep red and black, I got a long red hair devil wig that had horns attached to it and that's all I needed. Spooky, he was Satan himself, all dapper in his suite with vest, cape and horns. I did a all makeup on him to give him Jack Nicholson eye brows, he looked positively demonic! We were the hit of the Halloween party!

What ever you want to be this Halloween, what ever you decide your Halloween costume should be, please check this place out, they are the best on the Net!