A Halloween party wouldn’t be complete without some body parts! Take your celebration to the next level and recreate my amazingly scary Dead Man’s Diner!
My very favorite Halloween party theme thus far would have to be the Dead Man’s Diner. We decked out our kitchen to look like a truly gruesome, classic diner complete with severed body parts dripping with blood. Although some of my guests squirmed a bit when they were served hand-burgers and finger fries, they ate them all up. The open face sandwiches, bone calzones, and stubbed toe subs really took my guests by surprise, but even the young kids enjoyed eating their creepy cuisine. You can find the recipes for all of these dishes in my Hungry Halloween cookbook where you’ll also see a few photos of our party decor. If you’ve seen the pictures and are interested in hosting a similar themed party, I am going to explain in more detail just how we transformed our kitchen into a ghoulish diner.
We have a large island in our kitchen with an area for eating. The island has very pretty maple colored cabinets and trim, but I really wanted an old fashioned diner counter for our party, so I had to transform it somehow. I found packages of 8 1/2″ x 11″ silver opalescent paper (from Deals) which I taped to the entire front area of the island. As you can see in the picture the paper is very reflective and from a distance you couldn’t see the individual pieces of paper, it just looked silver and shiny. It worked perfectly. I then found cardboard body part cut outs (at Party City) which I taped to the silver paper. A roll of clear plastic printed with dripping blood (from Dollar Tree) was attached to the top edge of the counter to finish the effect.
Many diners have their menus hanging up behind their counter, but our kitchen is open to our morning room (actually my chocolate kitchen), so we created a wall out of PVC pipe on which we hung a large piece of black plastic. I created three menu signs using a graphics program (Printmaster) which I printed on 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper. I brought my small signs to a print shop and had them printed out in a larger 2′ x 3 1/2′ format. I hung my signs on the black plastic, added more bloody body part cut outs, and some creepy cloth. On the shelf below the sign were realistic looking severed body parts and a body form of a man’s chest. A few bloody knives and hatchets added to the gory effect.
One of my favorite little touches was quite a surprise to my guests.I placed a few fake severed fingers in my food processor.
Once a few guests noticed the fingers, they began showing them to everyone else. I saw the squeemish, turn a little green.
Of course, that was the whole point of this party theme. I did manage to gross people out with all the food and decor, but everyone realized it was in good fun and enjoyed the party.
What diner would be complete without waitresses and a cook? I ordered the classic diner uniforms from an actual uniform company (sorry, can’t remember where now) and the cook wore a chef’s coat , a cook’s hat, and an apron that we spattered with fake blood.
We actually served the food to order, which was a lot of fun for our 80 guests, but it kept the three diner staff members incredibly busy throughout the entire party. I don’t recommend it unless you can hire caterers or some teens to do all the cooking, serving, and cleaning.
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| Appet-EYE-sers |
I was so grateful that we had prepared all of the appet-EYE-sers and dead-serts ahead of time and served them buffet style.
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| Dead-serts |
Once all of the appetizers were eaten, we cleared the table then filled it back up with the desserts.
To keep the theme going throughout the house, we turned our living room into a funeral parlor and had lots of creepy decorations, hanging heads, and severed body parts throughout the entire house.
If you decide to use this party theme, I’d love to see pictures from your event.
wooooooahh