Atlanta Home
Published in: Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine
Published: October 2009
By Sara Dever
Kids aren’t the only ones who can get into the Halloween spirit. A Halloween diner party is a great way to bring friends together and spook up your house for a festive evening. Here are a few tips for haunting your home in stile.
Entryways
Make the best first impression on your guests with a decked-out entryway. Marcia Tantum, interior designer and owner of Marcia Tantrum Interiors, suggests using a 2-to-3-foot-high planter filled with chrysanthemums and a trailing vine line periwinkle or ivy. Place it to the side of your entryway and add three pumpkins – either white or traditional – in three different sizes with large, colorful fall leaves under the pumpkins and interspersed with pinecones. Decorate the pumpkins with paint or enlist your kids and carve them a couple of days before your party.
For a more elaborate, chilling entryway, Melissa Galt, interior designer and owner of Melissa Galt Interiors recommends creating a faux 
cemetery in your front lawn. “Don’t forget the fog machine – a must-have for misting up your front walkway – and always add glowing footprints and strategically placed blinking eyeball lights in the bushes or hanging from trees,” Galt says.
Living room
An easy way to add Halloween decor to your living room is to create simple orange and black pillow shams for throw pillows, says Knikkolette Church, interior designer and owner of Knikkolette Interior Decorating. This way, the shams can be easily washed and alternated between seasons and holidays.
Krista Watterworth, interior designer and host of HGTV’s Save My Bath, recommends taking branches from your yard and placing them around your living room in tall, sand-filled floor vases. “It creates a cave-like feeling and gives a spooky air to the room,” Watterworth says.
Tabletop
The tabletop is the central focus of your dinner party and where you can truly display your style. “For my own Halloween party last year, I did an orange-rose centerpiece by filling a silver urn with beautiful bright flowers,” Watterworth says. She also suggests giving your Halloween party a theme and then providing each guest with a themed party favor on their plate like tiara place-card holders for a King-and-Queen motif.
Halloween is the holiday of mass-candy consumption, so add a little fun to your table setting by placing candy worms on your guests’ plates. Also, spray-paint thrift store ceramic figurines, such as owls, with black matte spray and glue red jewels into their eyes for an inexpensive but fun alternative to conventional centerpieces.
The best part of decorating for a Halloween party? You can go big and outrageous or small and understated – it’s totally up to you. Happy haunting!
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