How to Throw an Epic Halloween Party

Hey guys! It's Lizzie here, and Halloween is right around the corner! Sorry the post is a little late, school's getting crazy. Anyways, I absolutely love having Halloween parties. For the past seven or so years, we've been having a Halloween party, so I've come up with a list of helpful tricks and treats to help you throw your own epic party.
1) Obviously, you need to figure out who you're inviting. I usually invite around five of my friends, and Emma invites about the same amount of her friends. Depending on the size of your house though, that can get a little crowded.
2) The next thing I love to do is decorate. There are so many ways to spookily decorate your house. You could have a theme (ie. skeletons or pumpkins), you could randomly throw Halloween themed things around your house, etc. Personally, I've come up with a collection of Halloween decor over the years, so I kind of throw things together. Some of my favorite things to use are fake cobwebs and spiders, skulls, pumpkins around the room, and witches hats. Now I can't tell you exactly how to decorate, so get creative. Also, cheap but cool decoration can be found at Walmart.
3) Who doesn't love food? You can't have a Halloween party without some killer (not literally) food. Candy seems obvious, but keep in mind you'll probably have tons of sugar as it is, especially if your Halloween party is on Halloween. I also like to have cupcakes. You can buy cool cupcake tins, get creative with the flavor, frost them Halloween colors, add some cool toppings. This year, we made cupcakes with white frosting, and then stuck these fake edible knives that we got from Walmart in them. You could also add red gel to make it look like the cupcake is bleeding. Next, something that is super simple, cute and tasty is chocolate covered pretzel ghosts. We took pretzel rods, white chocolate chips, and some black icing. Then we melted the chocolate chips, coated the pretzels about 3/4 of the way, and made ghost faces on them. Since all of that was pretty much junk food, it's a good idea to have some fruit there too. It doesn't necessarily have to be super Halloween related. Cantaloupe (which is orange) caramel apples, or just a bowl of fruit could be a possibility.
4) You'll also need to decide what you want to do at the party. Now, most parties will pretty much flow on their own, but just running around and talking with your friends isn't the most ideal party. You could really do anything at the party, but here are a few ideas.
- Haunted House- They are so much fun if you don't mind being scared, and are obviously very Halloween-y (is that a word??)
-Get outdoors- Something that we like to do living in the country is a hay ride. You can get some hot chocolate or apple cider and sip it as you go around the country talking to your friends. Now, I get that not everyone lives in the country, so you could get outside by playing games like ghost in the graveyard, going for a walk, or trick or treating (assuming that it IS Halloween).
-Costumes- Costumes may seem childish, but they really are fun. You and your friends could get dressed up, do scary makeup, and take pictures with your awesome costumes. Costumes are always hard for me-I never know what to dress up as. My best advice is to go on YouTube and find a list of costume ideas. I think it would be cool to dress up as a Snapchat filter, especially if you're good at makeup.
-Last but not least, I love watching a scary movie at night. You can get some popcorn, get in your sleeping bags, and enjoy being scared with your friends.
Alright, that's it for this week's blog, I hope you enjoyed it! Hopefully you got some ideas and are going to throw an epic party! It would mean a lot if you guys tell your friends about us, follow this blog,  check out our instagram @withlovemidwest , and lastly come back next week for another post!

Kick off to Fall (FALL FAVORITES)

Hi everyone! I hope you enjoyed last week’s post, because I know I definitely did. This week we are going to shift gears a bit and get more into fall. It’s October, so that means the leaves are changing, it’s getting a bit colder, and it’s time to change things up a bit. So for this week, I’m going to be giving you my fall favorites! Favorites posts are one of my favorites, because I get to rave about the products I love, and maybe you will find some love in this product too!

Another small update: as you can tell, this post did go up on a Wednesday, which is really late. If you didn’t read our post titled “update”, i had a pretty bad glitch with my computer. Because of this glitch, I end up posting a few days later than it is scheduled. I am getting this fixed, but for at least my next two posts, I will be either posting on a Sunday or a Monday.

Now, let’s get into this! Starting with my fashion favorites, I’m going to talk about some little trendy pieces that I have been loving in my wardrobe. The first of these is these little petite gold accents. There is something about yellow gold that I love, and I personally think it’s because it reminds me of the yellowish leaves that fall off the trees. My first of these favorites is this gold bracelet from American Eagle Outfitters (can get it in a set ). The main reason why I bought this set was to get this bracelet, because the accent on this bracelet is a gorgeous color of green that matches the gold fantastically. My other two favorites are rings, which I got from a store called Fun Sisters (Fun Sisters is a local store from my state, and you can check out what they have to offer on boutiques.com). Dark colors are always a go to for fall, but my favorite is dark green. My absolute favorite dark green right now is best displayed in these pants from American Eagle Outfitters. I absolutely love the fit of these pants, and the color is another benefit to creating the best looking fit. These pants are so versatile, and also go very well with another one of my fall favorites: chambray. I cannot describe my relationship with chambray with any other word besides fantastic. This top is from the Gap, and is one of the softest tops that I own. Now, I wouldn’t recommend wearing it with denim, because let’s face it: that would lead to a pretty odd outfit, but you can definitely wear it with pants like the ones i mentioned, leggings, the options are bountiful.

Fall beauty is something I really like to get into. I may be the only one to experience this, but whenever it starts to get colder, the dark circles under my eyes embrace the one’s of a racoon. To help fix these dark circles, I have been loving the Benefit “It’s Potent!” eye cream to reduce the puffiness and dark circles. I apply this before bed and before makeup in the morning, and look less racoon like. Moving on to makeup, I’m going to start with the eyes. My favorite colors this year are found in the Naked 3 palette by Urban Decay, which is available at Ulta, Sephora, or the UD website. The colors are fairly warm toned and versatile, so it is easy to create a casual or a dressy fall look. My all time favorite colors that I have been using with this palette are dust, buzz, and blackheart (I’ll attach the link to the palette, and to the other products I am talking about below). I have also been a huge fan of both matte, and berry lips for fall. So, to complete my normal fall look, I have been loving the Revlon Ultra HD Matte Lip Color in Addiction and Passion. The color pay off is absolutely AMAZING, and stays forever.

Now, this category is one of my favorites. Miscellaneous is where I talk about my fall go-tos, whether it be coffee, food, or music. One of my most common ones is coffee, so that is definitely going to be talking about that today. Now, if anyone knows me, they know I am an iced coffee drinker, no matter the weather. Since there is pretty much a Starbucks everywhere in the United States, I thought I would talk about my go- to order that gives a very fall- vibe that’s available all year long. My normal fall order is an iced caramel macchiato. Then, i get a little complicated by adding soy milk, and getting rid of the vanilla syrup, and substituting it with hazelnut syrup. I used to get this drink with normal cow’s milk and getting half vanilla syrup and half hazelnut syrup, however, the soy milk at Starbucks has a bit of a vanilla flavor. So, when I just get the soy milk, you can just cut out the extra sugar from having two different syrups all together, and getting an even creamier texture. Now, usually I don’t do scents, but I have been loving the Pacifica Spray Perfume in Sandalwood. This scent is a little bit musky, but don’t let it scare you! I find that there is a little bit of a citrus scent that lightens the woodsy smell, and it smells absolutely amazing. Another favorite scent of mine is the Unconditional Love perfume from Philosophy. It has a warm scent, with a little bit of a sweet undertone that just screams cozy.

So that is it for this post! I hope you enjoyed today’s post, and I will leave a link to the products below!

Until next time,

• Maddy

PRODUCTS:

Fashion:

Bracelet set: click here

Pants: click here

Top: click here

Rings: check out boutiques.com for new Merchandise from Fun Sisters

Beauty:

Eye cream: click here

Naked 3 palette: click here

Revlon Ultra HD Matte Lip Cream: click here

Miscellaneous:

Pacifica Perfume Spray: click here

Philosophy Unconditional Love Perfume: click here