A Big Halloween Night In

LittleStuff have teamed up with brand new bingo review portal Two Little Fleas and set a blogging challenge. Bloggers taking part have to describe how they'd create the perfect night in, if they had £750 splash on the event! I love planning stuff like this and often go on fantasy shopping binges so here goes...

It's a month away, but I think I'll plan the perfect Halloween night in. Halloween is about scariness, spookiness and creepiness. I am going to be strict about my Halloween theme - there'll be no sexy cat costumes or super heroes at my Halloween party! Halloween is the one night of the year that it is OK for my more macabre side to come out!

Fun and Games

Oh - OK - fun will be acceptable too! Apple bobbing, pumpkin carving and trick or treating are good Halloween fun. They are also cheap! For an extra challenge eager contenders could try turnip carving, which is what we used to do for Halloween when I was younger!

After these activities let's have some scary video games and scary movies available. Dead Space 3 and Resident Evil 6 should do the job for adults. Before kids have to go home/to bed we will have Monster House on Blu-Ray for those who are interested. This is the perfect kids' Halloween film. Just scary enough, but with a really good Halloween trick or treating atmosphere.

For later on we can replace the grown up video games with grown up horror films. Something Wicked This Way Comes is a classic Halloween film. But we will need something scarier as well. Evil Dead (2013) should have the right tone!

Terrifyingly Good Entertainment

Music and dancing will be Ghoulish. In fact, my dancing is pretty Ghoulish at the best of times! All songs must be Halloween-related. Yes - Thriller, The Monster Mash, The Timewarp. A Halloween Party CD (or two!) should suffice... if Halloween related songs run out... start the CDs again from the beginning. Yes it's a chilling kind of torture!

Food and Drink

Bloody Scary

All of that excess pumpkin can go in some pumpkin pies and pumpkin soup. Let's hope somebody likes pumpkin! We also need to make some glow-in the dark ghost cakes.To make the (almost) glow in the dark icing you need tonic water (Google it). The quinine glows under Ultraviolet light. So part of the budget will have to go to some LED UV torches! Lychees really remind me of eyeballs. If you stuff them with berries they are even more convincing. A nice strawberry coulis to dip in gives a convincing eyeballs in blood effect - Hooray!

Some spooky cocktails such as Martha Stewart's Blood Scary will be great fun for the adults. For the kids, the Halloween punch (thanks to BBC Food) featuring floating gummy worms is equallly fun!

A good proportion of our £750 budget will go on food and drink. We better remember some sweets for for trick or treaters too!

Decoration

Thankfully our house is already covered in scary looking cobwebs. Perfect decoration for this one night of the year (although admittedly a bit disgusting the other 364)! We will add some hanging spiders, bats, our carved pumpkins, gravestones, etc. Some spooky receptacles for snacks and drinks are also necessary.

Costumes

Fancy dress will, of course, be required. For my family I have picked out the following gruesome costumes:

For me: A mask, a red and green striped jumper, a fedora and some claws and... Tonight Matthew I'm going to be Freddy Krueger (Some people may claim I don't need the mask - but that's just mean)! What could be more terrifying; and those claws are perfect for skewering party food too!

For my wife: A flimsy pink prom dress and some red paint. Splatter the dress with paint and you've got Carrie!

For my daughter: A ragged white dress and a long black wig and she'll make a perfect Sadako (from the Ring)

For my son: I think he'll be a good Chucky. Some dungarees, a striped sweatshirt, fake knife and a mask will be required.

Ad hoc Mummy Costume... Spooky!

For those not entering into the spirit of things, a stock of toilet roll shall be on hand (that's around 1% of the budget). This will make the perfect ad hoc mummy costume for those forgetful enough to come in normal attire. In the unlikely event that the toilet roll is not needed for this purpose there are at least three other uses for it. I suppose that toilet rolling people's houses as the "trick" of "trick or treat" is to be frowned upon, so this will have to go in the bathroom for the guests, or be used to mop up the tears of terrified children.

Plan Your Own Night In

OK. Whether I win £750 or not I am now thinking "roll on Halloween". I really should have this party! As you can see Halloween excites me more than is generally accepted as normal. I could happily have written a blog post four times as long as this with a detailed Halloween inventory. Even I don't want to expose you to that much horror! In fact, if you have a better idea for a big night in, then blog about it, and enter here to win £750 of John Lewis vouchers to make it a reality.