Saturday night Dan and I hosted our second murder mystery party – the first was a “Murder of a Millionaire” for my 30th birthday two years ago – but this time around we wanted to combine it with a Halloween party and needed a spooookier theme.

Enter A Vampire Murder Mystery. We figured the costumes would be easy for everyone, the theme would be perfect for the holiday, and decorating would be super fun for me to transform our home into the Castle of Shadows, home to a vampire clan.

First I should say it all started with the mailed invitations complete with red wax seal and spooky stamps. When I found the perfect design on Minted, it pretty much sealed the deal that the vampire theme was the way to go.

As for decorating, I picked up pretty much all of the decor from Home Depot (the candles which you can buy in bulk), the haunted TV, a fog machine, and spooky lanterns. I got the gauzy black fabric, fake cobwebs, fake ravens, and plastic spiders at Target. I changed out all of the light bulbs for red bulbs I got on Amazon, and believe it or not I was able to pull together a ton of pieces we already owned to finish it off! People couldn’t believe how much of the “Halloween decor” was just our usual stuff! We moved furniture around to create more space for guests to mingle, picked up the rugs to prevent staining and spills, and moved our TV upstairs for the night. Lucky for me that New Victorian look that is so on trend translated to spooky Vampire castle.

A friend brought dry ice which we put in a porcelain cauldron on the dining table and created a fog effect with hot water… he also brought eyeball jello shots which were a BIG hit!

Other food included a lot of frozen appetizers from Trader Joe’s that are always a big hit, cheesy popcorn, homemade cookies from my mom, a homemade dip from another friend, and fantastic cheese boards.

We had a wine station in the living room, hard liquor bar in the dining room, and beer on the back deck so no one drink station was ever too backed up.

We ran the mystery for a bit over an hour – most of the guests got really into it! It was actually quite difficult, probably because there were 18 suspects to interrogate… hah Overall a great night though!

Now I am full steam ahead to transforming this place for Christmas!! Stay tuned and follow along on instagram at @alainakaz and #AVKholiday!