Halloween was “born” in Ireland and Scotland and was celebrated on All Hallows’ Eve, that is, at sunset on October 31st. The idea of dressing up as evil spirits for Halloween is so that evil spirits accept people as “their own” and do not bring trouble into the house. Halloween is celebrated in many countries, although it is called differently:
- October 31 is Halloween in the United States;
- October 30 - November 8 - All Souls Week in Austria;
- November 1-2 - Day of the Dead in Mexico;
- November 5th - Guy Fawkes Night in England.
When is Halloween celebrated in Russia in 2021? Is it even possible to meet him here? It “moved” to Russia in the 1990s from the USA, when it had already become a costume carnival without religious overtones and acquired the fascinating custom of collecting sweets from neighbors with the words “Trick or treat”! Russia celebrates Halloween like America on October 31st.
Year after year, the popularity of this Western holiday is growing, and in Moscow there are many places where you can have fun celebrating Halloween.
Halloween outfit ideas
The rule “the scarier the better” has long lost its relevance, and a stylish look has become an attribute of every Halloween party.
Halloween Ideas for Girls
Women's costume ideas
Mexican costumes for the Day of the Dead can inspire the most extravagant look. A vintage dress and an umbrella with thin lace are his must-have attributes.
Recreate the post-apocalyptic look with distressed rock 'n' roll biker jackets, lace-ups and metallic accessories.
Dresses with references to evil spirits are traditional for Halloween celebrations. Even witches, ghosts and vampires look damn attractive in the right costume.
Makeup and manicure ideas for Halloween
Makeup with the outlines of a human skull will look elegant and authentic: contour the cheekbones, add asymmetry, or highlight individual elements with a brighter color.
At a Halloween party, you can get rowdy and find yourself in a new “rebellious” role: with smoky eyes makeup, piercings and colored lenses.
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The look will not be considered complete if the nails are not in order. Use Halloween motifs in your manicure design: spiders and cobwebs, skulls and pumpkins.
The red gradient will look beautiful - like nails dipped in blood!
Ideas for guys
Men's costume and makeup ideas
Not every guy is willing to spend hours at the mall looking for his perfect Halloween costume. Makeup will save the situation! Facial features, beautifully emphasized with makeup in the style of Dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead in Mexico), will make the guy the star of the evening.
In movies, have you always sympathized with villain characters? Choose the image of a sad clown for the holiday - Joker or Pennywise, as in the photo.
Want to add brutality? Put together a post-apocalyptic or steam-punk look: heavy boots, chains and a naked jacket. All things can be bought inexpensively at sales or on services like Youla or Avito.
Halloween Ideas for Kids
Children's costume ideas
Adults may be skeptical about celebrating Halloween, but not children! The child is excitedly waiting for him, so choose a costume responsibly, or better yet, make it together.
It’s easy to make a black cat costume for a girl with your own hands. Cut black tulle into 20 cm strips and tie with an elastic band around the waist. A gymnastic leotard will go with the tutu, and make the ears out of felt and glue them to the headband.
Your son will love making a Zombie costume: stain old clothes with red paint and roll them in the sand. Mom won't swear!
Makeup ideas for kids
Whatever look you choose for your child, complete it with good makeup. If face painting isn't enough, go to a prank and gift store for fake headbands and scars, or craft stores will stock rhinestones and beads.
Come on, let's play, or what kind of competitions should we hold?
Even the most enchanting decoration and costumes cannot replace fun competitions and dances:
- You can start the holiday with a prize draw or end it with one. To do this, we put small souvenirs in some scary black bag and invite each guest to pull out a creepy little thing as a souvenir.
- " Nightmare Spell ". All participants of the holiday must come up with a creepy spell to congratulate the birthday boy. It doesn’t matter how it sounds, articulate or not, the main thing is to create fear. At the end, everyone explains what he conjured (for example, love to the grave, and so on).
- " The taste of blood ." Guests are divided into 2 teams, each task is to create a team name from letters. But the letters are just floating in glasses with “blood”. To do this, you need to tightly seal the pieces of paper with letters in polyethylene (iron the edges) and randomly place them in glasses. The team that comes up with the name faster wins (at the same time, until one participant completely drinks a glass of “blood”, the other cannot run to the table).
- " Moans ." The host shows the guests how terribly the evil spirits moan at night and asks everyone to repeat it. The worst performer is given a medal.
- " Mummy ". A competition that is appropriate for any holiday, and even more so for a Halloween themed birthday party. We divide the guests into pairs and give them a roll of toilet paper. Whoever makes the mummy the fastest wins.
If you decide to spend your birthday in a frightening environment and with bloodthirsty guests, then Halloween is the most suitable theme for this.
How to celebrate Halloween
If for some reason you had to stay at home or in the office on this “creepy” holiday, we have selected simple ideas for you on how to throw a party even in everyday life.
How to Celebrate Halloween at Home with Kids
If you live in a cottage community, there is a great idea on how to celebrate Halloween at home with your children. Dress up your children in scary costumes and send them, according to the old American tradition, to earn sweets from their neighbors with the saying “Trick or treat!” or Trick or Treat! Stock up on sweets yourself and hand them out to everyone who knocks on your door.
Make a “Get the Apple” attraction using available materials: put several apples in a bowl of water and ask the children to get them out with their mouths.
How to celebrate Halloween in the office with colleagues
1. In the office you can play the “Murder Mystery” quest. Prepare in advance the plot and cards with the characteristics of the characters: their alibis, secrets, connections. The evening will be spent searching for evidence and the “killer” will be revealed!
2. Organize a competition for “Best Costume”, “Best Performance”, “Best Draw”, “Best Treat Brought” and prepare memorable prizes for the winners.
Festival of evil spirits - basic concept
On the night that marks the transition from October to November (from 31 to 1), evil spirits descend to the earth. People came up with a kind of defense - to mingle with the crowd of evil spirits and buy them off with sweets. Therefore, in appearance, such an eerie holiday does not carry anything negative , so the main idea can be safely transferred to the anniversary celebration. Moreover, it will be relevant for birthday people of all ages. The main concept is to create a holiday without any particular need to intimidate anyone . It's like a parody of a horror movie - fun in scary costumes.
Halloween Decor Ideas
Pumpkin decoration
Carving is the art of carving vegetables and fruits. If you are still new to it, then below you will find simple ideas for decorating pumpkins.
1. To make a “Jack Lantern”, select a pumpkin with a symmetrical shape, remove the seeds and pulp with a spoon, and cut out the triangle eyes, nose and evil grin with a kitchen knife. Wipe the surface with alcohol to prevent the skin from molding. Place a candle or electric garland inside. Ready!
2. For those who are afraid of cutting themselves or who are preparing a holiday pumpkin with their children, it is better not to engage in carving. Dress up the pumpkin in a mummy “suit”: wrap the vegetable in bandages and glue felt or plastic eyes on top.
3. Don't want to spoil your food? Decorate your home with a pumpkin craft made from papier mache: cover the balloon with paper in several layers, let it dry, pierce it with a needle and remove it from the decoration. You can put absolutely any design on such a pumpkin and turn the creative process into a game.
DIY Halloween Decorations
1. Get out a broom and an old camp cauldron - now these are witch accessories. A “witch’s table” will also appear in the house if you put striped knee socks on its legs and put them on boots.
2. Does your daughter have old dolls that you just can’t take to the landfill? Make an aquarium out of them with doll heads as a decorative element, first applying Halloween makeup to the dolls with a permanent marker. For greater effect, you can dissolve red dye in water.
3. Buy foam sheets from hardware stores. Use a utility knife to shape them into a tombstone and paint them. Craft gravestones will look more realistic if you write on top who they belong to, dates of death and epitaphs.
4. No one canceled the festive decoration with balloons and traditional garlands with bats and spiders cut out of black cardboard!
5. If you are planning Halloween at the dacha, then take care of decorating the garden plot: you can buy plastic bones at a prank and gift store and stick them in a garden wheelbarrow with earth.
Choosing a room
If you want to rent a hall in a restaurant or club for some time, it is better to start choosing and agreeing on the program and treats in advance - closer to the holiday, catering establishments will probably be sold out.
Pros: you won’t need to particularly control the decor of the room, think through a program for guests and figure out what to treat them with. In decent places, specially trained people organize such things, and they do it well.
Cons: this is the most expensive option for holding a children's party. Although for large groups of children, for example, a class, it is perhaps the only possible one. An independent organization will not be much cheaper, and it will be difficult to accommodate three dozen active children.
If you decide to celebrate Halloween on your own and in your apartment or house, you will need to prepare: this will take about a week. It is wise to involve children in preliminary chores if their age allows this. For example, a few days before the holiday, they can draw invitations on thick paper for all guests - of course, with ghosts and pumpkins. This will create the necessary mood for all party participants in advance. Next, children can help with decorating the apartment, selecting music or preparing the table.
Invitations and gifts
An invitation card to a celebration can be bought in almost every stationery or bookstore, and on the eve of Halloween there will be many themed ones. However, it is doubly pleasant to receive an invitation into which a person “put his soul” and made it with his own hands:
- Button invitation from the cartoon "Coraline in Nightmareland". Use buttons from your mother’s box as decoration. You can glue them even with regular Moment glue.
- Bloody invitation. Print the text onto thick cardstock and spray it with red paint to look like it came from a crime scene.
- Vintage letter style invitation. If you soak the paper with tea bags and let it dry, the letter will look like it was sent 100 years ago.
Halloween is just catching on in Russia, and many people have no idea what gifts to give on Halloween. Why not stick to cute symbolic gifts? We have already talked about the tradition of giving sweets to children above. Here are some more interesting ideas:
- A jar of gummy worms;
- T-shirts with All Saints' Day symbols;
- Plasma ball or small Tesla coil;
- Fortune Cookies;
- Soft pumpkin toys and skeleton keychains;
- Themed dishes and glasses in the shape of skulls;
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Party of witches and ghouls, or what dress code to set
Before thinking over the dress code, you need to think about what format the birthday party will take place:
- If all guests are notified in advance about the theme of the celebration, then dress options can be offered. The disadvantage is that no one will want to cook and buy a special suit. And some may not try very hard, for fear of looking too “in” with the theme. To do this, you need to warn that you won’t be allowed in without a costume, and that at least some creepy accessory and compliance with the main color will be enough.
- A surprise party will be very interesting for guests when, instead of a standard feast, they are greeted by a birthday boy dressed up according to all the rules and an original atmosphere. In this case, the birthday person will have to take care of costumes for the guests and a makeup artist who will do “scary” makeup (something like a dedication).
The most popular female images are:
- witch;
- imp;
- drowned woman;
- the heroine from The Addams Family;
- a nurse smeared in blood and so on.
Men can become:
- vampires;
- Count Dracula;
- zombie;
- ghosts;
- the devil;
- death.
In fact, there are no restrictions, the main thing is compliance with the eerie atmosphere of the holiday. We invite you to watch a video that shows how to create a simple but beautiful makeup for Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZM2YdlRroE
Halloween Treat Ideas
The buffet table and food are as much home decoration as garlands and pumpkins. However, it is not the complexity of the dishes that is important, but the creative approach. See what fun treats you can make yourself.
Sausages in puff pastry
This dish was prepared by many mothers and grandmothers in childhood. Attach peppercorn pupils to pieces of mozzarella and the treat is ready!
Mummy toast
Another variation on the theme of mummies is the original design of hot sandwiches with strips of cheese instead of bandages and olive eyes.
Spider eggs
Cut the olives like spider legs and place them on top of the boiled eggs.
Zombie peppers
A delicious vegetable salad can be customized with an original presentation. Remove the caps from the peppers, remove the seeds, cut out the eyes and ominous grin.
Mandarin pumpkins
What child will come to a holiday if there is no sweet table? Draw monster faces on banana slices with chocolate paste, and peeled tangerines can easily transform into pumpkins - you just need to add a celery stalk.
Apples in juice
Peel the apples, give them the shape of skulls and fill them with cherry juice.
Biting donuts
You can make donuts for Halloween either yourself or purchase them from online stores, decorating them with all kinds of sprinkles and mastic figures.
Music
The musical accompaniment must fully correspond to the theme of this night. Heavy in style and gloomy music, diluted with mystical motifs and soundtracks from horror films - this is what you need. Thrash metal, death metal and gothic metal will be appropriate here, just don't overdo it.
If space allows, invite some local little-known rock band to the party . This pleasure will not cost much, especially if the group is just starting to perform on stages.
And don’t forget the three main rules for surviving a horror movie, compiled by Randy Meeks, the hero of the movie “Scream”: 1) no sex; 2) forget about alcohol and drugs; 3) never say: “I’ll be right back.”
Author: Victoria Sirotenko
Preparing the costumes
Understandably, most kids will likely come to your party already in costume. The hosts of the holiday - those who will meet, treat and entertain the guests - will also need to dress up. And it won’t hurt to prepare a few pointed witch hats, funny colorful wigs and cloaks for future use - even if one of the guests doesn’t have time to prepare, he won’t feel like a stranger in the midst of the general fun.
It would be a great idea to prepare a set of paints for face art, but you should make sure that the paints are of high quality and wash off without leaving a trace. If you have prepared a photo zone, it is logical to place a makeup artist next to it. The main thing is to remember that children, especially small ones, cannot sit quietly in one place for very long, so drawing should take very little time. An alternative to face painting is Halloween-themed transfer tattoos and hair crayons.
