As we love being outside here in STT Swings we thought what could be better this midterm than to create a Halloween Hooley in the garden. Like all you nature lovers, we don’t care what the weather’s like (well storm Ophelia aside). Food and hot drinks taste even better outside don’t you think? We especially love snuggling up in the tree house with a hot chocolate (extra marshmallows) and watching the steam rise, yumalicious. And it’s even better when you’re dressed up in fancy dress. There’s no set date for a Halloween Hooley, it’s your midterm, so you decide when you want to host the “party to end all parties”.
Halloween Hooley Decoration Ideas
We all love pumpkin carving but it’s time to put down the knife. You can create a nice effect around your tree house simply by placing pumpkins of different sizes (and colours) in a group. This also avoids any potential fire hazards. They work really well around a tree or part of the tree house. Then place a group of some dead leaves in front of the pumpkins. It looks amazing and not a carving tool in site! You can also stack pumpkins of different sizes, one of top of the other. If you add a layer of stray between them it creates a lovely effect.
Other effects that look great include just painting the pumpkin with silver or black spray paint and then you can either write your message on it with a marker or stipple it on (if you’re feeling really creative).
Halloween Food ideas
Prepare food that celebrates the harvest and which you can take outside to the treehouse. Pumpkin soup would be ideal as you can pop it into your school flask. You may need an adult to help as soup can get very hot and there’s nothing as bad as a soup scald.
Halloween Pumpkin Soup Recipe
You will need; 2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions finely chopped
1kg pumpkin
or butternut squash peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks
700ml vegetable stock or chicken stock
150ml double cream
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, then gently cook the onions for 5 minutes, until soft but not coloured. Add the pumpkin or squash to the pan, then carry on cooking for 8-10 mins, stirring occasionally until it starts to soften and turn golden. Pour the stock into the pan and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes until the squash is very soft. Pour the double cream into the pan, bring back to the boil, then purée with a hand blender. A great snack for the garden, the soup can now be frozen for up to 2 months.
Add a handful of pumpkin seeds to a pan, then cook for a few minutes more until they are toasted. Sprinkle over your soup.
How to create a Halloween face
Finally, no party would be complete without the hostess (or host) with the mostest. A Halloween Hooley is about the only time in life that ‘more is more’ and you can never look scary enough (especially if the neighbours only get a peek of the ghost hopping about the tree house now and again). It’s actually easy to create scary faces. We’ve gathered up some of our favourite ones to inspire you. These looks can be easily achieved by following the cartoon make up guide on the left of the image. Start with white face paint, fill in black circles all around the eyes. Next rim the dark circles with red face paint and draw the cheekbones with black face paint. Shade in the area under the black with grey face paint. Finally, add stitches over the lips and blacked the nose tip for that ultimate zombie look.
Remember to share your fabulous Halloween Hooley pics with us on Facebook and Twitter. Use the hashtag #HalloweenHooley.