Page 22 Fall Home & Garden | September 2024 Lincoln Daily News Both Halloween and Thanksgiving provide opportunities to celebrate with friends and eat some good food. To make them less stressful, writing out checklists can help you save time and money. As you make your checklist, decide how to decorate and what to serve. Start shopping a few weeks before the party to make sure you can find what you need. Before you buy food and decorations, it is helpful to choose a party theme. In “Throw a Halloween party on a budget,” Heidi McIndoo says by starting with a theme, “you can then gear all of your decorating and food around that topic instead of having a mishmash of ideas.” Themes McIndoo recommends include a pumpkin carving party and a Halloween movie theme. Other themes McIndoo shares can provide easy ideas for decorating. Among these themes are spiders and webs, bats and vampires and ghosts and graveyards. For the spiders and webs, much of the décor will be black and white. Fake spiders can be placed throughout the house, Fake cobwebs can be stretched “over your table, chairs, doorways and more.” Welcome the Fall Holidays With Early Prep and Good Planning With a bat and spiders’ theme, a mixture of karo syrup and red food coloring creates fake blood you can put on serving glasses. Fangs cut out of white paper can be placed on photos. Plastic bats can decorate walls or be hung from the ceiling. To create graveyards, McIndoo suggests you “line your sidewalk with gravestones made of foam. Hang ghosts of different sizes from the ceiling and light fixtures.” On your serving table label foods “with cards resembling gravestones and get creative with your food names such as bat wings (chicken wings), calzombies (calzones), chocolate-covered flies (chocolate covered raisins), and (of course) witches’ brew.” Continue --
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzExODA=