2004 party
Theme: DIY Haunted House
Costume: grey zombie (both of us)
This entry begins with the instructions for the party, which were linked from the evite and hidden in The Rose Room.
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Congratulations. You've found the secret page of information about AyM's Halloween 2004 bash. Now, we will have to kill you; muwahahahahahaha!!!!!! Or, at the very least, force you to attend.
The party starts at roughly 8:00 pm. If you want to arrive a little earlier, that's fine. Haunted House competition will start at 8:30 (more information provided below). Costumes are required.
WEATHER: As of 10/22/04, the projected weather for Saturday pm 10/30 will be: low of 36 (dress warm everyone!!!!!) and partly cloudy. Perfect for spotting the moon between the clouds in the halloween sky.
Haunted House Competition
Start time: 8:30
Decorating time: 30 minutes (until 9:00)
Walk-through: approximately 20 minutes (9:30-ish)
Awards!
Outline and Rules: Upon arrival at the party, guests will be divided into teams (there will either be two or three teams, depending on the number of guests). Teams will be selected at random. Pay attention, this information becomes important in a minute.
Teams will be assigned a specific section of our house to haunt/decorate. Sections may include stairways, closets, the backyard, open rooms, etc. Teams will be given diagrams indicating the exact boundaries of their section. The section assigned to your team is non-negotiable, and off-limits areas must be observed.
Teams will work together to turn their assigned area into a haunted house. Sufficient props will be provided, but feel free to bring your own as well (see the Props section below for more information). Teams will have 30 minutes to decorate their section, and are bounded only by their imagination. Now is not too early to begin thinking of ideas!
After 30 minutes, teams will stop decorating and everyone will regroup. Then, teams will take turns walking through each other's sections. Prior to each walk though, each team will be given an additional 5 minutes for all of their team members to get in place (if necessary) in their decorated section. Teams may want to designate a 'guide' to lead other teams through their section. All party members will walk through the same section, meaning first we will all walk through Team 1's haunted house, then we will all walk through Team 2's, etc. Teams will be respectful of each other's decorations, and will not try to unmask ghosts, stomp on giant killer spiders, etc.
Absolutely no one is allowed to do anything that might injure another person, or in some way damage his or her possessions. So, no throwing blood or guts on each other! Babies may not be shaken up and used as instruments of projectile vomit.
Following all of the walk throughs, all guests will vote on which haunted house they liked the best. First place team members will receive fabulous prizes, and second place team members will receive slightly less fabulous prizes, and everyone else will be fed to Martini, the ferocious puppy-dragon.
Props (Mine): As a Halloween fanatic, I have of course been collecting decorations and props for a few years now. Teams will be allowed to use most of this stash to decorate their section of the house.
Our props will be distributed in a 'white elephant' type fashion. All available decorations will be displayed. Then, a member of Team 1 will come forward and choose one prop from the group. Next, a member of Team 2 will make a selection. And so on, until all of the props have been distributed. In addition to traditional Halloween decorations, props will include sheets, cobwebbing, tulle, noisemakers, etc. Please, please, please do not break anything.
Once a team has selected a certain prop, that prop can not be 'stolen' from that team. Again, use your creativity and imaginations!
Props (Yours): In addition to AyM's decorations, all guests are invited to bring their own items to be used in decorating their haunted house.
Everyone is highly encouraged to bring a flashlight. Flashlights are good both for safety and for making scary faces/shadows.
If you bring your own props, they will not be distributed in the 'white elephant' selection. If you bring it, you use it. Now, remember when I said teams would be selected at random? This is where that information becomes important: you and your partner may not end up on the same team (the only possible exception to this is parents of small children, we're not going to break up a family). Therefore, if you and your partner bring a single prop, it is likely that only one of you will get to use it. Please decide who gets to use the prop before you get to the party. You may want to each bring your own item.
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What we learned:
1) If guests need to prepare something for the party, and this preparation involves teamwork, it’s better to assign teams before the party. Especially if there will be guests in attendance who don’t know each other. One of my friends, who was 7 months pregnant at the time, asked if she could be on the same team as her husband Just In Case something happened. I was already planning on putting them on the same team, and assured her I would not split them up. She then asked if I would let her know who else would be on her team, so she could start planning. So, I sent each team an email listing their respective teammates and reiterating the party rules - this allowed the team members to get to know each other briefly ahead of time, as well as to discuss decorating ideas. If I ever do this type of party again, (which I will), I will defiantly assign teams as soon as is possible. One difficulty to this, however, is that you have to have a pretty good idea of who will be attending before teams can be assigned, since you’ll likely want the teams to be even. So perhaps a good rule of thumb is to have teams finalized by one week to ten days prior to the party - that should offer adequate planning time as well as a near-finalized guest list.
2) Evite rocks. I’ve used Evite for other parties, but for this one it was very useful for both myself and the guests. With Evite, we could easily see who would be attending the festivities, as well as other guests’ email addresses so my friends could chat amongst themselves. (No, I am not sponsored by Evite, I promise.)
3) Post Halloween sales also rock. One friend brought an ENORMOUS amount of decorations, which she had acquired at numerous post-Halloween liquidation sales. She brought almost as many decorations with her as I had displayed. Im-press-I’ve.
4) Never underestimate the decorating power of old sheets and clothes. One can stuff old clothes to make horribly killed or disfigured dummies. Sheets can be stained with blood, or torn, or made into ghosts.
5) Martini has no use for ghosts. Our ferocious puppy, who is friendly to all creatures and curious about everything, does not like Big White Ghosts one bit. She doesn’t trust ‘em, and lets them know they better not come into her yard, or try anything funny, or else they’ll be very sorry. She doesn’t even like seeing them hanging out in yards across the street or down the block. Martini didn’t mind seeing mommy and daddy dressed up like zombies with skeleton face-paint, or seeing other guests in various masks, wigs, capes, jump-suits, etc., but she draws the line at ghosts. So we know that if your ordinary, every day crazy stumbles across our house she’ll welcome them with open paws, but if they happen to dress as a ghost then they’d better Watch Out.
6) As a host, you can participate in the decorating. My husband and I didn’t, and instead took the time to sit for a few minutes and answer questions. However, unlike the murder mystery and road rally type parties, we didn’t need to monitor the activity as closely. So - it’s really up to you, but if you want to participate, then in my opinion you certainly can. If you are co-hosting with another person then you likely want to be on different teams, so no one can accuse you of any impropriety.
Feedback:
One of our guests, who was a friend of a friend, said this party was the best Halloween party she’d ever been to. Before the decorating began a few members of the competing teams could be heard egging each other on - I think the winning team might even have done a pre-decorating cheer. This event really brought out some people’s competitive natures. I think the idea of a contest helped to build up excitement for the party, which hopefully contributed to everyone’s fun. Also, I received several compliments for my decorating (I put up decorations in the areas of the house that were not used in the game). Note, it took me two weeks to decorate for the party - because, as I said, I’ve amassed quite a few items and also because I am extremely anal retentive when it comes to Halloween prop placement. I likewise tend to pay a lot of attention to detail. For example, since we were dressed as the living dead I decided to post an obituary for our ‘former selves,’ including an ‘old’ black and white picture of us (in costume but without make-up) when were ‘alive.’ A friend (who throws many, many parties himself) commented on this decoration and wondered if I went as all-out for Christmas (answer: sometimes, depends on who’s coming over). Several guests liked the small haunted village display, and of course my husband’s scary sounds and music CDs added to the atmosphere. My goal with any Halloween party is to offer guests an evening of fun in an out-of-the-ordinary setting; this year I think we were able to do so.
Next year there will probably be at least 2 babies in attendance, so I am already looking forward to planning for Halloween 2005, and tailoring the event to a multi-generational audience.
