Set-Up: Evaluation

I didn't mean to leave it this long to update this, but the last couple of days have been wicked tiring! As it turns out, a really awesome party = a lot of cleaning up afterwards.

So! Everything started to kick off properly on Friday 29th, when I started decorating. One of the first things to go up was the graveyard outside. I took the pic opposite while it was still light because I'll be damned if I'm any good at taking pictures when it's dark. Just visible in the trees are two hanging skeletons. When it got darker I turned on the LED finger lights that were set up at angles to light up the tombstones, but the batteries were appalling - as in by the time the first guests were arriving, four of the six were almost out. At least I know in advance for next year though - then I can do what I wanted to do in the first place; invest in proper stake lights!

All those leaves scattered around? They did not come from the tree at the top of the picture. That's two bin bags worth of leaves from down the street! In fact, that wasn't even enough. You'd think two huge bags full of leaves would go a long way, but that's another tip for next year - get way, way more leaves.

This is my front door! It's not exactly Halloween-OTT but I'm crazy disappointed that I didn't have time to get more photos of the little details of the decorations. I meant to go round and get photos of everything, but we underestimated how much time we needed to get ready so I was still making Tel into a wolf when the first guests arrived. And then once the party was started, it was all about pictures of people rather than things. So I'm gutted I don't really have a proper record of all the little details that made it an awesome night, which is why I'm posting a picture of my door - it's one of the only details I do have!

Things I have learnt so far then! That I need more leaves, better lighting, and more time to take pictures before everything gets going. Also, that if my boyfriend will be wearing a costume, it's better if he starts getting ready earlier in the night so that he's not trapped in the upstairs bathroom, frantically rubbing face paint into his beard while people start arriving.

I did get a couple of pictures of the kitchen. We used a Chop Shop bloody instruments banner across one corner, which looked great and is completely reusable - it's folded up in a box, ready for next year. Also visible in this first picture is my version of the Tempt Your Fate game that I found about on the Halloween Forum. We nailed two cauldrons to a corkboard to hold fates to be taken and used fates, and all the punishments, such as Awful Antidote (dark rum) and Spooky Spirits (cherry and apple vodka shots) were lined up underneath. We had other fates, but I'll come back to that in another post!

Most of the food in these pictures isn't unpacked yet so the effect isn't spot on, but the food we had went down really well. I've had parties before where you're left with acres of food afterwards that no one seemed to want but this year, we had about 25 cheese balls, 6 coconut balls and a bowl of gummy sweets left, and that was about it! Nothing was homemade, since we didn't have much time or space, unless you count throwing some mini sausages and some vegetable spring rolls in an oven until they're slightly too cooked as homemade :)

Another note for next time - make time to get coloured lightbulbs. An orange bulb in the kitchen would have looked really interesting, but we never got round to going to a hardware store. We could have used green in the bedroom as well, for a bit of additional spook!

I didn't get a proper pic of the inside of the conservatory and to be honest, there wasn't much to see since I'd planned to have the pumpkin carving set up in there, but we were let down by the person supposed to be selling us a table and chairs, so we just did it in the kitchen. Which meant the conservatory was really unused, except as a brief pitstop for people who were on their way out to have a smoke. What you can see in this pic is the room roll that covered three quarters of the conservatory. Never again. I thought the idea of room roll was fantastic, but it took forever to put up, the top and bottom halves didn't line up properly and the material didn't want to stick to either white tack or sticky tape. Definitely not worth the effort for so little return.