Tips for Throwing a Western Themed Halloween Party

Halloween parties are great opportunities to become something that your everyday life does not permit you to be. An evil dentist (actually, that one is all too real), a prom queen, superhero, etc. Themed Halloween parties give direction to your guests and allow you to produce a cohesive theme for your decorations, food, music and games. Western themed Halloween parties hearken back to our wild-west roots and are always extremely popular. Here are some ideas to help your western themed Halloween party stand out.

Fun & Games
Games and events help make a party fun, interactive and memorable. Here are some ideas to reinforce your western theme:

1. Create "Wanted" posters for each guest. As the guests come in dressed in western garb, take a picture of them on a digital camera. You can easily plug this camera in to your computer and place the photo on a "Wanted" poster template. Hang these everywhere, and let your guests take theirs home.

2. Set up a "High Noon" for your party and schedule water gun shoot outs. Give each guest a water gun. You can fill these with different colored water for fun (just mix water with food coloring). At your party's High Noon, have a shoot out among all the guests, or choose two to battle it out while everyone watches.

3. Pass out sheets of paper with different cowboy terminology on them, and ask the guests to work them into their lingo. Give prizes to the guests who use the lingo the most and the most effectively!

Décor
Décor is one of the most important elements to reinforcing the theme of your western themed Halloween parties. Here are some inexpensive ideas to create a real western feel:

1. Create saloon doors out of construction paper, paper bags, real wood or packing paper. Affix these doors to your actual kitchen door or front entryway.

2. Create a trough out of several buckets (cover them in paper or wood to make it look like one long trough. Prop up stick ponies (sometimes found at toy stores) or horse stuffed animals against the trough.

3. Tumbleweed and cactus are important elements to scatter around your home for your western themed Halloween party. You can buy premade tumbleweed and cactus decorations at party stores. You can create them out of construction paper as well and affix them to your walls (at floor level).

4.. Make up a western themed name for each dish in your buffet and write label cards with that name. You could call beef stew, "Varmint Soup", or call chocolate brownies, "Cowpoke Sludgies."

Music
There are many songs that are inextricably tied to our vision of the Wild West. Here are a few that can be downloaded:

1. Theme song to, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2. The Bonanza theme song

3. The Rawhide theme song

Also, any acoustic, country or traditional campfire music will work too!