Haunting your Halloween house

Halloween comes and goes so quickly each year that sometimes it hardly seems worth decorating for it. As soon as the trick-or-treating is over it is time to decorate for Thanksgiving.

We came up with a few easy ways to get your home looking festive for the spooky holiday on a minimal budget.  Even just one or two of these ideas will add some Halloween flavor, and many can be recycled or repurposed into a Thanksgiving display.

• At the front door: A small cluster of pumpkins in various sizes can create a nice front-door bookmark effect. Use an odd number of pumpkins and be sure they are all differently sized to give the display some depth.
• On the porch or in your entryway: Make a simple scarecrow with straw or corn husks from your local Farmers Market. Use an old button-down shirt and jeans for the body and a broomstick or yardstick for the structural base.  (You can even stuff the clothes with newspaper or old plastic bags to give them shape, since the inside won’t be visible.) Find a burlap sack for the head and use buttons, felt and magic markers to make the face. That straw hat you wear to the beach in the summer tops it all off.
• On the dining table or mantle: A cluster of tiny mini pumpkins is a cute touch. You can get them for less than a dollar apiece at the supermarket, and they now come not only in traditional orange but in white, too. Place them around a vase of fall flowers for added effect.
• Hang moss or fake cobwebs from the doorways. If you have hanging Spanish moss in your area, this is easy to find and the green strands make for a super-spooky look. If you don’t have mossy trees around, fake cobwebs from the hobby store are very cheap and fun.

What home-crafted Halloween décor ideas have you come up with? Share in the comments section.

Tweet