Fab Fete : Haute Halloween Decor and F&B
Designing and creating food stations, beverage bars, and dessert bars has always been a fun, creative outlet for me. Professionally, I planned and executed them for various luxury brands at Saks as well as for Moroccanoil at NY Fashion Week as part of a larger event marketing effort. Personally, I’ve planned them for friend’s baby showers and my daughter’s birthday. Staking out a location is always step #1. When I saw this bright orange wall at Gymboree, I knew it would be the perfect Haute Halloween backdrop. 
I opted for the wall along the hallway without the hooks so that I could have a blank slate from which to work upon. And I pressed 2 smaller, 4’x5′ tables together to provide ample room for pizza, beverages, snacks and dessert. I was working off a tight budget so nothing here was custom made like I’d usually do for other parties. All the paper products were surprisingly found at the local Party City. Pretty impressive for Party City, huh? 
I just had to create the banner, tape it up, rest my black velvet fabric and tape up the edges with black electrical tape and throw a striped fabric down the middle making sure everything touched the floor. You never want to see the legs on a table unless they are very decorative and match your design theme. A benefit for having your linens touch the floor is creating needed storage space. Tuck all your replenishable foods /snacks and take-home boxes underneath for easy access. I loved the banner because you could still give it a customized look with the stickered letters that came along with it. I wrote Haute Halloween for this food staion, and used another one saying @fab_kids in the photo room. 
The white pillared cake stands were topped with orange paper to add some additional contrast to the table and make the mini cupcakes pop. All the mini cupcakes were sponsored by Baked by Melissa and were soooo scrumptious! And I had already bought the cake stands for another event. These can be found at Bed Bath and Beyond.
It’s nice to be able to have some detail both behind the food station wall as well as in front of it. So I brought the black/white/orange decor theme in with the handmade chain banner below which helped to tie the whole look in. The sodas were canistered in these simple containers, also purchased at Party City and were labeled “venom” and “poison” to go with the Halloween theme.
The napkins and leftover goody bag spiders continued the black / white / orange theme down to the very last detail.
GoGo SqeeZ sponsored our applesauce snacks and were a popular hit amongst our costumed crowd.
We also had pumpkin – shaped pretzels, cookies and fruity chews. Guests dined in a separate room, formerly the art room.
Goody bags and sponsored beverages, Trimino and Green Mustache were also stationed here.
The photo area had a simple backdrop using the same banner found at the food station. It read @fab_kids so that the brand would show up in everyone’s photos.
The chalk hashtag unfortunately did not stay on long but guests were asked to hashtag #fabkidsandtheirstylishmoms (our FB page name) on any of their Instagram uploads.
Once they tagged that and the venue @gymboreenewyork, they’d immediately be entered to win VIP tickets to Gymboree’s upcoming Thanksgrooving disco party. Congrats to Kye who dressed up as Robin Thicke and won these tickets!!
To see all the photos from the event see the FB album. Or to read more about the party click here. And to find out how to replicate our Anna Wintour, Andre Leon and Karl Lagerfeld Vogue trio, click here!
Thanks to my 7 sponsors for helping make this Haute Halloween party a huge success!
- Gymboree for the venue, raffle and goody bag inserts
- Baked by Melissa for the mini cupcakes
- GoGo Squeez for the snacks
- Fidi Families for the cross-promotion and goody bag inserts
- Green Mustache for the smoothies
- Trimino for the protein waters
- Legoland for the 4-person family pack raffle
Every Korean first birthday features dol towers like these. Traditional ones are made with black and cream colored beans but that didn’t match my decor so I took the liberty of making mine with pink and green candy (along with paper towel rolls, and a glue gun). Gettin’ crafty here! Before you know it, I’ll be scrapbooking and weaving baskets! Also, I chose not to follow the usual tradition of placing these at the head table, or in my case, the dessert table and instead sat them next to the children’s art easel area so that section would tie into the rest of the party decor.
