(words by Nicky Calladine)
Fancy dress Skeletons, wizards, witches and Hogwarts characters, Paladone’s Halloween day with a Harry Potter twist was enjoyed by all of its staff and temps on Monday 31st October.
The Paladone Team were all invited to come into work dressed for the occasion in either Halloween or Harry Potter fancy dress. They were also invited to bring in themed cakes, savouries and drinks to enter into our very popular and competitive bake-off contest.
The day was embraced with huge amounts of enthusiasm and fun by every part of the company – a tremendous amount of effort was put in to costumes and painted faces, along with fabulous bake off entries.
The day started at 6am with our distribution team arriving in full costume to a spooky entrance foyer filled with creepy props, pumpkins and spider webs. They were greeted by their own warehouse skeleton complete with costume and hi vis jacket! The rest of the company filtered in shortly after, arriving in an array of costumes, from spooky clowns, the entire weasley family from Harry potter, a headless vampire, dementor, wizards , hogwarts pupils, dobby and even a golden snitch.
– The Paladone Team in this years fancy dress offerings!
Lunch time at 1pm – the whole company filtered in to the bake off arena, to enjoy freshly delivered pizzas and the spooky savouries made by staff including pumpkin soup with home made breadsticks and zombie finger hotdogs!
Then on for desserts and to enjoy the amazing cakes, biscuits and treats including themed cupcakes, monster cakes, skeleton cheesecake, vampire teeth biscuits, tremendous spider cakes and one complete with gummy earthworm surprises inside. We even had 8 litres of Polyjuice Potion made for staff to enjoy!
– all the Weasley siblings posing with our Commercial Director, Yann LB
Due to so many fabulous entries and fantastic costumes, the judging social committee had a hard time picking winners and decided to expand the categories to allow for more winners.
5 of our staff were eventually chosen to receive prizes with a couple of staff receiving double prizes for both their costume and their bake off entries.
THE WINNERS
Best Harry Potter Costumes
– ‘Dobby’ – Karis (national account manager)
– ‘Professor Quirrel’ – Kulbir (business systems manager)
Best Halloween Costumes
– ‘Zombie Nun’ – Helen (sales support)
– ‘Headless Vampire’ – Kevin (business development)
Best Cake & Best Halloween Entry
– ‘Red Velvet Dagger Cake’ – Karen (new product developer)
– ‘Spider Cake’ – Helen (sales support)
Best Harry Potter Entry
– ‘Harry Potter Cupcakes – Jennie (graphic design manager)
Best Savoury Entry
– ‘Pumpkin Soup’ – Karis (national account manager)
The day finished on a high with staff already planning what they are going to wear for next years event! Some of our temps enjoyed it so much they are hoping to return again next year to participate in the fun. The day was spookily spectacular in every way and the Paladone social committee are now busy organising Christmas activities and the big Christmas party for all of our staff to enjoy.
Happy Halloween!
