Halloween Decorating
Halloween decorating is an event where you can get away with any kind of decorations and no one will think twice about your sense of style! They’ll just see you as being fun. I love it and enjoy flexing my creative muscle at this time of year. It’s completely up to you how much or how little you decorate for this holiday. Although I’m sure if you have kids around you tend to do more. I am certainly finding that this year.
At my last house, I had a neighbour who loved Halloween. It was her favourite holiday, so she always had lots of decorations up. She would do these fantastic DIY Halloween decorations, which I admired. I felt that I could do whatever I wanted as well because it would compliment her yard. Now, I’m one of the few on our street to do some Halloween decorating, but I’m not letting that hold me back! And you shouldn’t either. I like to stay within a set budget for holiday decorating and come up with ideas that I can reuse the following year. I want to show you that you can still get a great Halloween style without having to splurge!
Looking for fall decorating ideas? Check out my post on Fall Trends here!
Creepy Lawn Ghosts
My big Halloween decorating project is an idea my husband found a few years ago. I made these ghosts last year, and I reused them this year! IT only took me a few evenings to make them the first time, and one afternoon naptime to set them up. I’m so excited about how it turned out!
Materials:
White Plastic Grocery Bags, 1 for each ghost
Newspaper, lots
1″ diameter Wood Dowels, cut to 42″ long, 1 for each ghost
1/2″diameter Wood Dowels, cut to 18″ long, 2-3 lengths
White Shower Curtains ( I got mine from the Dollar Store)
Elastic Bands
Twine
Orange mini LED lights
Here is what I did:
1: Stuffed Grocery Bags: I used five white grocery bags and stuffed them with old newspapers until they were the size I wanted. These are about 10 inches in diameter. Tie the handles into a knot and formed the bag into your desired head shapes.
2: Dowel Bodies: I recommend using 1″ diameter dowels, which are strong but narrow enough to stake into the ground. Cut them down to 42″ long. I laid them in a circle on my front lawn to decide how far apart I wanted them to be. Then hammer in your dowels until only about 36″ is sticking out of the ground. This will make sure they don’t blow over in any wind gusts. Lastly, put your garbage bag head on the dowels by pushing down on the bag so the dowel pierces through the layers of paper. Reform your head if you need to. If your grocery bags have any labels on them you’ll want to move the bags around so that it’s mostly the white part that’s visible.
3: Shower Curtain: I opted for white shower curtains instead of tablecloths. I found the material to be a bit thicker, and the weights at the bottom keep the ghost bodies from getting tangled up in any winds. Unfold your shower curtain and drape over your ghosts’ new head so that it hangs pretty evenly on all sides.
4: Tied Them Up: I cut twine to tie around the neck of my ghost and give it a definite head shape. Then decide how long the arms need to be to reach out to the ghost beside it. Use another cut of twine at the shoulder to form an arm. Do this on both sides of your ghost. Then you can use twine or elastic bands, like I did, to tie the hands of two ghosts together. You can also use twine to further define the body of your ghost with a waist or leave it to flutter in the breeze.
5: Set Up Lights: Once all of your ghosts have joined hands, set up a fire teepee in the middle of the circle. Hamer the shorter dowels into the ground at an angle to form the teepee. Then wrap orange mini lights around the teepee. Make sure the male end of the cord is at ground level to plug into an extension cord!
You can check out the original post here. You will see that I did alter it to personalize it, and you can too when you try it out. That’s the beauty of DIY, you can customize however you choose.
Halloween Decorating
Most of my Halloween decorating focus is on my front porch. All of these items have been used in previous years. And most came from superstores or dollar stores. See? You don’t have to go broke to be festive! Although some of those inflatable decorations are pretty cool. We will also be carving a pumpkin the night before Halloween.
When Halloween is over, I store the decorations in a tote marked Halloween and put it away for another year. I have the storage space so it’s worth it to me to reuse decorations. A bonus is that it isn’t all going to a landfill year after year to sit and rot. Now that’s scary!
You may have noticed that I didn’t mention anything about decorating inside. That’s because I don’t really do it. We have minimal Halloween decor inside to keep things simple. As you can see there is a sign, some pumpkins, and some window decals for my son to play with, and that’s it. I prefer to keep the interior of my house decorated for fall. Trick or Treaters won’t be visiting inside my house, and really, I do the Halloween decorations for the little visitors. If you are throwing a Halloween party, that’s a different story! I won’t be though so I’m going to stick to my concept and save some money on holiday decorations. You can opt to do this too, or reverse the concept and do more inside your home than outside.
I’d love to see pictures when you’re done your Halloween decorating too! Happy Hallowe’en!
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