Halloween at the Office: Eat, Drink, and Be Scary

Before you start party planning with coworkers, make sure you get your company's approval. Most companies like to foster a positive corporate culture with seasonal celebrations, but it's wise to check first in case you need to move the Halloween festivities off-site and after hours.

Once a time (a mid-afternoon break is usually a welcome event) and place (a conference room or break room is ideal) are scheduled and approved, send out an invitation to coworkers via e-mail. Use a small Halloween graphic tacked on to your signature to keep it festive.

Are your coworkers planning on dressing in costumes? If they would rather leave the costumes to the kids, go for an easy Halloween theme that would make dressing up relatively fuss-free. Ask people to simply dress in orange and black, or wear wacky hats or Halloween-themed ties and accessories.

If your company allows alcoholic drinks in the premises, serve Post Road Pumpkin Ale, an orange-colored beer with a warm pumpkin aroma and crisp taste, or these spooky spirits. If there’s a no-alcohol policy, serve Hawaiian Punch or cherry soda in glasses and drop a peeled grape into them for an eerie "floating eyeball" effect.

Ask coworkers to bring in food with Halloween-friendly names: deviled eggs, devil's food cake, chicken (severed) fingers. If people are too busy to cook and bake, buy a batch of spookily decorated cookies and cupcakes, or ready-to-eat sweet treats like Godiva Chocolates for Halloween.

Did looming deadlines and hectic meetings leave you no time to organize a party? You can still celebrate Halloween at the office with a cubicle trick-or-treat event. Ask coworkers to bring in candy and visit each other's cubicles for trick or treating. And if anyone forgot the candy, find "treats" in the form of office supplies like Post-It notes and colored pens.

Get a Halloween head start and decorate your cubicle a few days before October 31. You don't have to go all-out but a couple of fun, spooky details can help kick the holiday into high gear.

Download a festive screen saver onto your computer, whether it's a flickering jack-o'-lantern or a dancing skeleton, or collect black and orange paper clips and link them together to make a Halloween garland to hang around your computer screen.