A Haunted Halloween

Let's get our traditional spooky on. It's the witching hour!

Decorating for the Party

Party suppliers and Dollar stores bulk up large at Halloween time and they have a wide array of items at very reasonable prices. Definitely pop into these excellent locations to load up on decor for your party. I have several ideas for decor that use these resources.

Bats & Brooms

Park your broomstick on the front porch alongside some pumpkins and gourds. You can buy the perfect Halloween broom from the Granville Island Broom Co.

Jack "O" Lanterns

Pumpkins are essential decor elements for a Halloween party. Buy several in varying sizes and carve some but leave the majority intact to decorate with paint, glitter, ribbon and sequins. Purchase tiny pumpkins and gourds to hollow out and fill with LED candles. Save your pumpkin seeds for baking and sharing.

Leave your carved pumpkins outdoors but keep the others inside for the party. Hollow out a few pumpkins to use as beverage servers by simply inserting bowls filled with ice inside the pumpkin. Leave one hollowed out pumpkin to fill with flowers for a buffet table centerpiece. Decorate the pumpkin with swirls using gold and silver thumb tacks or simply spray paint the pumpkin using metallic colors.

Creepy Crawlers

Load up on spiders and webs to place in corners of doorways, drape casually between furniture and hang from the ceiling.

Household items, gardening items, branches, leaves and candles can be utilized to create spooky settings, adding to the Halloween look. The dollar store carries skulls and bats and ravens and a wide array of bloody body parts. It's not a bad idea to raid the hubby's garage for chains and drop cloths.

Arsenic & Old Lace

The Dollar Store also sells huge lolly pops that you can re-wrap yourself with clear, red, black or orange cellophane and decorate with ribbon and lace. Pick up inexpensive glass bottles or beekers while you are there and Halloween labels that you can write on yourself or that are pre-made with words like "poison", "arsenic" and "magic potion" and fill them with different coloured fruit punches. Perfect for a "scientific experiment gone bad" vignette!

Purchase lace tablecloths for a few dollars or less at garage sales and dye them black for Halloween!

Garage sales are a great resource for Halloween items at a fraction of their original cost.

I found boogie boards at one sale. Perfect for painting with gray chalk paint and turning them into gravestones for the yard!

Food, Drinks & Treats!

Find Inspiration Galore right here at my Ghoul-ery of great vids for Halloween Fare!

My Halloween Ghoul-ash Recipe

Great Goulash starts with a perfect base of home-made tomato and Italian sausage sauce. Miniature meatballs made right using ground pork and ground veal are added to the sauce to cook through and then the most far-out twisted pasta, tortiglione, is tossed into the mix. Served with fresh Italian bread and water or a lovely Chianti wine, this is a hearty Halloween meal, best served up in stew bowls. Feed your trick-or-treaters this meal before going outdoors and they will not be eating too many treats before bed. A great party dish, too!

Ingredients-Instructions

The Sauce

25 roma tomatoes
3 large Italian Sausages (mild)
2 cups of thin sliced white mushrooms
1 large green pepper
1 15 oz. can of kidney beans
6-8 cloves of thin sliced garlic
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
5 leaves of fresh basil
2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese
spaghetti (approx, 100 grams per person)
2 tablespoons of salt
2 cups of water

Miniature Meatballs

Rinse the tomatoes and score each vertically 4 times from top to bottom with a knife
Add tomatoes to a pot of salted, boiling water (1 tablespoon of salt)
Blanch tomatoes for 1 minute and then immerse all in a bowl of icy cold water and peel the skin off each tomato
Add oil to a skillet and when warmed add in garlic, mushrooms and green pepper slices, cook on low until softened, stir often
Cut open 3 Italian sausages and squeeze the contents into the skillet, stir often until browned
Add tomatoes to a large saucepan and crush with a potato masher
Add the skillet contents, half the basil and the rest of the salt to the saucepan
Add the kidney beans

1/2 pound of ground veal
1/2 pound of ground pork
1/2 cup of grated Romano cheese
1/2 cup of breadcrumbs
1 large egg

In a large mixing bowl, manually combine the ingredients until well blended
Shape into miniature meatballs and add to the sauce
Cook all on low for 3 hours, adding 1/2 cups of water when boiled down, as needed

Half an hour before serving, boil the tortiglione pasta in a pot of lightly salted water, approximately 7-10 minutes, and when done stir pasta into the sauce and serve.