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Plan the Perfect Halloween Party

  • April 21, 2010 4:21 am
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Decorations are not the only part of a successful Halloween party. You can spend a ton of money on decorating your house, but your party may still end up boring. You can actually throw a Halloween Party spending a minimum amount on decorations and still throw a great party. To throw a Halloween Party that will be the talk of the town for years to come, you need to ensure that you concentrate on all of the elements required to throw a great party. You need to ensure that your budget allows for you to include invitations, decorations, food, drinks, party games, lighting and music. If you do not take the time to consider and include each one of these elements into your party planning, then your party will likely be lacking something. Let us discuss each one of these categories briefly to help you plan the perfect Halloween Party.

Let’s start with the invitations. You need to design you invitation in advance of the party. Your choices are to create one yourself using your computer, buy invitations or even have a printing shop custom design the invitations for your party. Whichever option you use, you should ensure that your invitation is high quality. You want to entice people to come to your party and one way to do this is with high quality invitations. You should also send your invitations out early in the month of October. Other individuals will be planning parties also. By sending out your invitation early, you can ensure that your potential guests will RSVP to your party instead of your neighbors.

The next thing to consider is decorations. You do not have to spend a lot on decorations. You should pick a specific theme for your party (ex. Graveyard) and stick to it every year. This way you can add decorations to your party every year instead of trying to buy a bunch of decorations all at once. I would start out with the basics. You will want to purchase some spooky cloths and spider webs. You can then cover your furnishings with these items to give an immediate haunted look for very little money. When you combine this with the correct lighting and music, you will have a very spooky effect.

As far as food and drinks are concerned, you can find great recipes online just by searching for Halloween recipes and Halloween cocktails. You should try and pick recipes that apply to your theme if possible. You can also have your guests bring a dish to help cut down on the costs of your party.

You should definitely plan out your activities. Entertainment is a very important element to your party. If you do not have anything for your guests to do, your party will be very boring. For example you can have a costume contest or a mini pumpkin carving contest. Also kid’s games can sometimes be fun even for adults. Who doesn’t like a good old fashioned sack race or bobbing for apples.

You lighting is also very important. You do not want it to be too dark so that your guests cannot see. However you do want to ensure you keep a haunted and spooky look. You can change out your bulbs in your house to blue colored bulbs. This will give the appearance of darkness but ensure there is enough light to see. The other recommendation on lighting is to get as many flameless candles as you can afford. You can usually get flameless tea lights for pretty cheap. Do not use real candles because they are too dangerous. Flameless candles really add to the effect so do not overlook this option. Put them everywhere you can.

The last element that you will need to consider is your music. You need to find to two types of music. You will need some scary music with sound effects and then you will also need some good Halloween Party music. You will use the party music in your main party area and the spooky music in areas to add spooky ambience. For example, you can play scary music and sound effects in your front yard to produce a scary effect as your guests arrive. You can also have some spooky music playing lightly in the bathrooms to add that special effect to those areas as well.

Plan the Perfect Halloween Party

Seabear – We Built A Fire

  • March 22, 2010 9:21 am

When you put out a debut album as charming and understated as Seabear‘s brilliantly homespun debut, the Ghost That Carried Us away, the follow-up is inevitably plagued by nervousness and rife with sophomore-slump potential. but Iceland’s Seabear have topped themselves handily with their stunning (really, stunning) follow-up, we Built a Fire.

On their first outing, it was fairly obvious that Seabear was the brainchild of one man, Sindri Mr Sigfsson (who’s been called the Icelandic Beck, perplexingly), and his whispered presence permeated everything on the album, so much so that it would have been easy to mistake him for a one-man band. but On we Built a Fire the band’s six instrumentalists are allowed to shine – to glimmer, even – creating a wholly organic and breathtaking work of synergistic songcraft.

If its music is any indication, Iceland is a far-off place that’s still alive with magic and glacial faeries, where the rising sun still symbolises something mystical and awe-inspiring. Seabear do share some sonic similarities with their compatriots Sigur Rs. but where Sigur Rs deal in otherworldly etherealisms and made-up language (beautiful and unattainable as it is), Seabear take a markedly more down-to-earth approach to their achingly fragile pop tunes.

We Built a Fire is a decidedly more full and lush sounding record than its predecessor. as such, Seabear may have lost a bit of their homemade arts-and-crafts appeal, but the full-band sound suits them well. Strings lilt, drums lope at lightly galloping mid-tempos, and the odd electric guitar (a gently plucked Telecaster by the sound of it) makes it into the arrangement from time to time.

Lionface Boy opens the album with a subtly driving bass beat, reminiscent of Matt Pond PA‘s Halloween. each instrument is played with soft fragility, and Sigfsson whispers his baritone so quietly that it’s hard to imagine him not singing from a near-sleep lull in front of a quietly warming fireplace. Fire Dies Down opens with stratospheric harp arpeggios and otherworldly saw bowing. “One day this body will break. One day these hands will shake,” Sigfsson sings over vibrato strings.

The country two-step Wooden Teeth is a bit of an oddball, reminiscent of Iron & Wine, circa Our Endless Numbered Days. but even in its upbeat jaunt, Sigfsson’s voice is front and centre in its quietly introspective lull. “We got married while you were asleep,” he sings. “Carved our names out on your wooden teeth.” still, Seabear don’t burn the barn; they just catch fireflies in the hayloft.

In the same way, Softship bounds a bit too loudly, carried not by a ghost, but by a Gin Blossoms ’90s alternative-radio guitar tone. (It should be mentioned that this is, by no means, a bad thing.) and by the time the album closer Wolfboy comes around, its upbeat drive – which would have seemed so out of place and nigh on impossible on the Ghost That Carried Us away – comes across as a marked step in the evolution of a gifted songwriter surrounded by the best possible company.

We Built a Fire is an unassuming, quietly smouldering flash of brilliance to carry us from the deadened depths of whitest winter into the slanted and enchanted light of a spring well spent.

Seabear – We Built A Fire