A happy Halloween birthday

The assignment:

a Halloween birthday featuring no tricks, all treats

The goal:

a melting pot of Halloween and fall

Tricks to pulling off the look:

1. Use (approximately) equal parts Halloween and fall

2. No empty spaces!

3. Pick one color to weave throughout

Using equal parts

This look is just as much Halloween as it is fall which makes it fun to look at.  There is a ton of orange here (thankfully that color counts for both fall and Halloween) so it became more about balancing the black, purple, and brown. Small details like the candlesticks (and witch boot holders), dessert items, floral picks, and dyed flowers work to give the colors equal representation.  Incorporating the various wood grains into this look blended everything together (as opposed to this celebration where I purposefully avoided wood) and created that warm fall feeling.

No empty spaces!

I wanted this table scape to be chock-full of festivity, especially since we were combining fall, Halloween, and (most importantly) a birthday! Triple layering the table runner added fun textures and sparkle while string lights and tea lights provided random pops of “glow” along the scape.  As a general rule of thumb, there are never enough pumpkins, so I always stuff them in every nook and cranny whenever possible.  There’s hardly any uniformity here and it works beautifully for this look.

Incorporating purple 

Purple was selected for two reasons. First, it’s an honorary Halloween color and served as a reminder that this was, in fact, a celebration of Halloween too.  Second, there are so many fun shades of purple to use (and I wanted to use as many as possible).  From the cookies pop ribbons to the purply-pink shade of the table runner, the hint of purple in the macarons all the way to the chrome balloons, there are so many possibilities.  The magic happens in the small details, so the more the merrier!

And since this took place on Halloween, I couldn’t resist the opportunity for a full family costume.  All of the details can be found here where I discuss this look and several others over the years.