Halloween will be here before we know it – and it’s always fun to put up some decorations to make the house look spooky. Decorating your home for Halloween can be a really good time, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.
October is the perfect time for decorating outdoors, too. It’s not too cold, but it’s not hot either. The leaves are falling and the nights are getting longer. Think about creating a fun and unique holiday display that you and your neighbors can enjoy.
Dig Some Graves
It’s easy to put in a small graveyard for the holiday. Grab some essential elements of Halloween decor like skulls, bones, and scary jack o’lanterns. You can probably get a good price on things like skulls at the local dollar store. You can build your own fake tombstones out of floral styrofoam, or any styrofoam you can buy in sheets. Carve your own jack o’lanterns to put in between or on the “graves.” You can even go all out and buy some fake Halloween crows to perch atop your tombstones, or a rubber arm to reach out of the soil.
Give the Trees Eyes
You can make anything creepy by giving it a pair of eyes, and luckily it’s not hard to come up with a fake pair of eyes suitable for a small tree or shrub. Buy a pair of the plastic pumpkins they sell in dollar stores – the kind kids take trick-or-treating to collect candy. Cover the round base of the pumpkins with aluminum foil, then paint the rest white with white spray paint.
The unpainted bottom of the bucket will be the iris of the eyes. Paint a black circle in the middle for the pupil, and add some red veins to make the eyes look bloodshot. Place them in the branches of a bush or tree not too far apart.
Get Goulish with Glass Jars
Pumpkins aren’t the only things you can use to make a jack o’lantern. In fact, in the old days, people used turnips or beets as jack o’lanterns – and they were probably scarier.
If you want to light up your porch, walkways, or other outdoor areas with lanterns but don’t want to carve a bunch of pumpkins, make spooky luminaries instead. Grab some old glass jars, paint them orange or yellow or white, or whatever color you like, and paint faces on them. Add candles or another light source.
Stuff Some Ghosts
You don’t need to spend money on those jack o’lantern trash bags for your leaves. Take your plain white trash bags and draw big, spooky ghost faces on them with a black magic marker. Then stuff them with leaves and arrange them around the yard.
Weave a Wreath
Wreaths aren’t just for Christmas anymore. Halloween wreaths are cool and creepy and, as an added plus, might keep people from knocking on your door.
You can get creative and make a Halloween wreath with anything. Add a skeletal hand to turn a regular, green Christmas wreath into something a little more sinister. Buy a branch or grapevine wreath form and a bunch of rubber snakes – weave the snakes into and around the wreath to make a truly discomfiting display. Or, hot glue styrofoam balls of various sizes and plastic spiders to the wreath – finish off the look by stretching some fake spider web over everything.
Welcome the Spiders
There’s so much you can do with Halloween spiders. Stuff a pair of white tights with a baseball in each foot, and then glue plastic spiders all over the outside of the giant “egg sacs.” Hang the tights from a tree, and overhang, a porch railing, or a fence. Stretch fake cobwebs across your porch and shrubs, and adorn them with big, black plastic spiders. Make a cobweb wreath by stretching fake cobweb over an embroidery hoop and putting some spiders in it. You can even hang spider-shaped LED Halloween lights around your porch railing.
Decorating for Halloween doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming – although the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. You can buy a few nice pieces of Halloween decor online or in your favorite craft shop, and DIY a lot of the rest. Make big, veiny eyes for your shrubs or make a creepy wreath for your front door. You may not have a huge budget, but your only limit is your creativity.
