Showing posts with label Halloween Hootenanny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween Hootenanny. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Eerie and Entertaining: The Perfect Halloween Party - Guest Post by Debbie Fletcher


Eerie and Entertaining: The Perfect Halloween Party

With the horror-based holiday fast approaching, now is the time to begin the preparations for the perfect fright fest by holding your own Halloween themed party. There is no better occasion to embrace the dark side and indulge in all things sinister and creepy and invite your friends and family to share your enthusiasm joining in with the festivities and taking part in some ghoulish games and emulating their favourite creepy characters with the best in Halloween costumes, www.costumes4less.com offers the best opportunity to recreate the horror based characters of past and present to really get into the spirit of Halloween.

A Daring Date
Make sure you hold your party either on or as close to Halloween as possible, the purpose of the party will lose impact and sense if it is weeks after the holiday. 

Eerie Invites
Be creative with the invitations, you want to reaffirm the theme of the party to your guests and make them understand how seriously you are going to be celebrating the occasion. Word them with the best adjectives and descriptive language and have the invite in the shape of a typical Halloween themed character or animal.

A Miserable Menu
You may not want to have a sit down dinner but you should provide snacks for your guests that HAVE TO tie in with the theme of the party. Be creative, name things with a typically Halloween name and turn normal dishes into a horror filled mess.

Confirm Costumes
Halloween is the only time where a lack of costume is just not an option. It is the perfect holiday for dressing up and there really is no excuse for guests turning up without one, they are simply and easy to put together. They are a must and this has to be emphasized to those you invite.

Garden Graveyard and a Haunted House
Go crazy with decorations, turn each room into a positively ghastly area that will shock and scare your guests. There is no point making a disjointed effort, when it comes to Halloween you must go all out and that begins with the decorations.

Creepy Competitions
Turn typical party games into a horror themed extravaganza, pin the limb on the corpse (not a real one obviously), head bobbing instead of apples and no party would be complete with a costume contest.

Disgustingly Devious Drinks
Obviously, you need to alter the drinks depending on whether or not the party is for children or adults but the same rule still applies. Make sure your drinks follow a theme in much the same way the food does. A bloody mary etc.

Monstrous Music
There are a lot of songs that are typically Halloween themed such as the Monster Mash but if you do not want simply gimmicky songs then think heavy metal, slow eerie compilations, there are usually playlists online that will give inspiration.

Wait Until Witching Hour
The party needs to go on until at least midnight or for those with real stamina, witching hour. Every possible Halloween / element of fear needs to be embraced and incorporated into the party.

Trick or Treating?
This may not be the best idea for adults but make sure it is an option or at least cater for the possible trick or treaters that may come to your door looking to wreak havoc. Just because you are having a party does not mean you can neglect the other Halloween enthusiasts.

There is one important thing to remember when organising a Halloween party and celebrating the holiday… turn EVERYTHING into a fear fest and turn the simplest everyday items into something to be afraid of!  


 


Debbie Fletcher has a love for everything art, design, and especially horror. She loves nothing more than than to write, and trys to take up any creative opportunity that she can. You can follow her here: @Debbie_Fletch18













Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Halloween Hootenanny - 2013!





Please join me for my 3rd Halloween Hootenanny, celebrating all through October!

  • Creepy reviews. 
  • Ghoulish giveaways.
  • Scary posts. 
  • Frightening interviews.
  • Spooky goodness.

If you would like to contribute with a guest post, please contact me at  midnytereader@gmail.com.

Please grab the button!


 photo 36dcf516-daff-496e-b195-4fb1f3d6fb74.jpg







If you are hosting your own Halloween bookish event on your blog sign up here so that others can celebrate Halloween all over the web!

Monday, October 1, 2012

The Magic of Halloween - Guest Post by Merrie Destefano

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved Halloween. It might be because it comes a week after my birthday and heralds in a host of fall/winter holidays that involve food, presents and days off school. Or it might be because the seasons change in October, especially back in the Midwest where I grew up. There’s a sudden snap in the air, forcing you to don jackets, and when the wind blows, it strips trees of brightly colored leaves. A harvest moon hangs swollen and full in the sky and you can almost smell magic in the air.

This is the magic of the supernatural, of creatures who can fly, spells that can change flesh to fur and dead people who refuse to stay in their graves. It’s the magic of long nights and short days, of twilight afternoons when shadows look surprisingly like people.

I’ve always been enchanted by books that spoke of other worlds and the fantastic creatures who lived there. I loved Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein and H.G. Wells and J.R.R. Tolkien, for these authors invited me into literary chambers of wonder. Martians and elves and tattooed men and time machines—these were the things that peopled my long autumn nights, as I curled up with one book after another. The creatures in these stories looked incredibly similar to the costumes my friends wore on Halloween, strange and colorful.

As a writer, I tried to capture my love for the supernatural magic of Halloween in my second novel, Feast: Harvest of Dreams. It’s a story about creatures who harvest human dreams and the dangerous hunt that takes place every October 31st in the mountains of Southern California.

I also tried to capture the eeriness found in gothic ghost stories in my recent novel, Fathom, a tale of a sixteen-year-old girl whose sister and mother die mysteriously.

I continue to find myself drawn to tales that deal with things we can’t quite understand, things like death and ghosts and immortality, and I love shadowy landscapes where dark mountains scratch against gray skies, where clouds press so low to the earth they become mist, shrouding everything.

To me, Halloween embodies all of this.

It’s a night when small groups of children wander from house to house, trying to get the courage to walk up the steps of an abandoned Victorian mansion. It’s a night when people pretend to be more than they are, wearing magnificent costumes and crowns and waving wands. It’s a night when ghost stories are both written and read, a night when every wisp of wind is imagined to be a sign of life beyond the grave, a night when dreams and nightmares merge to become something tangible.

It’s a night when the imagination runs wild.

As it should.



With twenty years’ experience in publishing, Merrie Destefano left a 9-to-5 desk job as the editor of Victorian Homes magazine to become a full-time novelist. Her first two novels, Afterlife: The Resurrection Chronicles and Feast: Harvest of Dreams were published by HarperVoyager. Fathom is both her first YA novel and her first indie published novel. When not writing, she loves to camp in the mountains, walk on the beach, watch old movies and listen to alternative music—although rarely all at the same time. Born in the Midwest, she now lives in Southern California with her husband, their two German shepherds and a Siamese cat.

Fathom excerpt:

http://www.merriedestefano.com/fathom.html
Author website:
http://www.merriedestefano.com/
Author blog:
http://merrie-destefano.blogspot.com/
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/MerrieDestefano
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1205132688
Author’s HarperCollins micro author site
http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/36854/Merrie_Destefano/index.aspx


Thank you so much Merrie for capturing exactly how I feel about Halloween. 

Merrie is giving away two (2) e-book copies of her latest YA book Fathom.  Please see below for contest rules and to enter.

Or, you can buy it HERE.





CONTEST:

~This giveaway is for an e-book of Fathom by Merrie Destefano.  There will be two (2) winners.   One book will be given away to two winners.

To Enter:
~Leave your name and e-mail address on the Rafflecopter form.
~Extra entries are optional.
~If you are choosing to do extra entries, please read the questions/instructions CAREFULLY! If you do not follow the instructions, I reserve the right to disqualify that entry. (For example, if I ask you to leave a comment and you do not, or you don't answer the question, that entry will be removed.)

Rules:
~Please see my contest policy HERE.
~Contest ends on Saturday, October 6 at 12:01 a.m.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Halloween Hootenanny - 2012!




Please join me for my 2nd Halloween Hootenanny, celebrating all through October!

  • Creepy reviews. 
  • Ghoulish giveaways.
  • Scary posts. 
  • Frightening interviews.
  • Spooky goodness.

If you would like to contribute with a guest post, please contact me at  midnytereader@gmail.com.

Please grab a button!


Photobucket

 








If you are hosting your own Halloween bookish event on your blog sign up here so that others can celebrate Halloween all over the web!
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