In our family, Thanksgiving belongs to one sister-in-law, Easter belongs to my other sister-in-law, and Christmas is a free for all. Halloween is all mine. We gather at our house in the afternoon to carve pumpkins and try to the get the girls to eat a little (they are usually too excited to get much down). They we get their costumes on and take turns walking them from house to house.

Well this year, we’ll have an even bigger crowd and I thought it was time to get our party on. My main inspiration was the candy thievery that occurs each Halloween after the kids go to bed and we (OK, mainly I) start raiding their Halloween buckets for Reese’s Cups. I thought we should all have a pumpkin to decorate and some candy to snag.

Tomorrow, I’ll blog about our party activities, but today the focus is on the sweets. I used Squared Party Printables’ free Halloween set from Catch My Party because they were more sweet than spooky.

I went with traditional orange and black with pops of green and purple and polka dots. To cover the mirror above my sideboard, I draped two sheets of orange wrapping paper. Then I cut in half some left over black polka dot wrapping paper and used that to cover the gaps between my orange papers. I also used the polka dot paper on the sideboard.

The sweets table started in my local CVS. While I would have loved to order custom cookies, timing meant buying Frankenstein and pumpkin cookies at the drug store. (They were actually tasty.) To add to the cookies, I focused on candy in Halloween colors. In the apothecary jars, I offered orange gumballs, candy corn, Reese’s Pieces, and Hershey Kisses in Halloween wraps. I turned ghost Peeps into lollipops — super easy. Orange and purple Pixie Stixs were popped into vases and topped with ribbon.

Being short on time, I bought cupcakes and just added Halloween sprinkles and cupcake toppers. The girls and Don love the Halloween Oreos, so I dipped those in orange candy coating. The cupcakes and Oreos were both displayed on candle stands (hint: way cheaper than cake stands) that were covered in orange, green and purple Sixlets.

Finally, I added orange and black take-out boxes, decorated with more printables and satin ribbon. Our guests can fill the empty boxes with candy to take home.

Back tomorrow with part two of the party!

Vendor Credits

Printables: Squared Party Printables

Striped boxes: Dollar Tree

Take-out boxes: Michael’s

Candle stands: Hobby Lobby and WalMart

Trays: WalMart

Wrapping paper: Tuesday Morning and WalMart