Halloween Decorating Ideas

Fake Cobwebs - You can buy bags of fake filament-style cobwebs either online at companies like Oriental Trading or at local party supply stores. These days they come in various colors, but we personally use the white ones to make them look a bit more realistic. Tack or securely tape one end of the webbing to the location where you are placing the web (corners, trees and around door frames are the best spots). Then stretch the web so that you end up with fine web strands - it is quite unbelievable how far one bag of webbing will stretch. Just tack down pieces of the web as necessary. A small black plastic spider is usually included in each bag of webbing, but buy some extras so that you can have several spiders 'crawling' on each web. We love to put them around our front door frame with a large spider near the doorbell - it gives the kids (and the adults) a little scare. See the video below for tips on how to hang the webs.

Bloody Hand prints & Footprints - Many companies sell sets of window clings that look like blood spatter and bloody hand prints and/or footprints. We put these on our patio doors so that it looks like a blood-covered person crawled out the doors. These are always a hit with Halloween party guests.

Reusable Jack O'Lanterns - Craft stores like Michaels sell hollow foam pumpkins with sizes ranging from small to gigantic. While they cost a bit more than real pumpkins up front, you'll get your money out of them by using them again and again for years to come. And fortunately, they look amazingly realistic. Just purchase a few of the pumpkins along with your usual carving kit. Just follow the carving kit instructions or create your own design and carve the pumpkins into jack o'lanterns. Since the foam is flammable, DO NOT use candles inside the pumpkins to light them up. Instead we use either battery powered tealights, small flashlights or glow sticks to create a candlelit effect.

Candles & Holders - There are a wide array of Halloween themed candles and candle holders on the market today. You can find orange tapers with Halloween designs and white tapers featuring cobweb designs. They look great displayed in black metal Halloween themed candelabras. You can also find floating candles such as eyeballs. Just fill up a large glass bowl with water and add a few drops of red food coloring to make the water red like blood and float the Halloween candles inside. Place these throughout the house for an eerie evening effect. If you are using real flame candles, be sure to keep an eye on them so that they don't burn down too far creating a fire hazard. A more safe alternative that is good for costume parties is to use votive candle holders with some battery powered tea lights. These can be tucked in amongst the food and other tight places where costumes and people could easily come in contact with an open flame.

Spooky Music - No haunted Halloween house is complete without scary music playing so be sure to buy a Halloween themed CD featuring organ music, blood curdling screams and shrieks.

An extensive array of Halloween lighting kits and accessories are available both online and at party supply stores. Lights can be used to set the mood for the yard. If you just want fun, light-hearted Halloween decor, purchase some strings of colorful orange pumpkin lights to string along your front porch or around your front door. This is a great decorating idea for a pumpkin baby shower too!

However if you want to create a more scary haunted house type feel, replace all of your outdoor lights with black lights that put out a purplish glow and supplement your lighting with outdoor can lights or solar uplights that can be used to light up trees and corners of the house where you've hung ghosts, bats, and other spooky creatures of the night.

Transform your front yard into an eerie graveyard! You have a couple options when it comes to putting tombstones in your yard. You can either purchase vinyl or wood tombstones at a local party store or online at one of the many Halloween supply shops or you can make the them yourself if you are crafty. Going the pre-made store bought route can be a bit expensive, but it does save time and energy which can be in short supply around seasonal holidays. Kind of like at Christmas when you buy the holiday gift baskets instead of making them.

To make tombstones yourself, I recommend watching the Youtube video below. It is literally one of the best do-it-yourself Halloween videos that I've ever seen. The 15 minutes long video gives you step by step instructions for creating styrofoam tombstones for your yard. The best thing about making them yourself is that you can create interesting shapes and funny epitaphs and scary names like Rob DeGrave or Miss N. Cranium. This can be a fun project to do as a family.

I've also included a video on how to create fencing for your graveyard. I recommend that you place the tombstones in the yard and if possible add some mounds of sand in rectangular shapes (like you might see at a freshly dug grave in a real graveyard). Then place the fencing around the outside and add a grim reaper or crypt keeper motion sensitive Halloween monster for the ultimate graveyard!

Many online companies and party supply shops sell out of the ground torsos or head and hand sets that light up for a great effect in the dark. You can also find light-up skeletons that are meant to be half-buried as well. Place them along the sidewalk or driveway where the party guests or trick-or-treaters will be walking up to your house.

Just place the body parts, torso, or head in the ground using the stakes supplied with the kit. Take some fall-colored leaves that have fallen from the trees in your yard and tuck them around the monsters so that the sticks are completely hidden and the monster looks like it is rising right up from the ground.

Use these eerily fun decorations to give your party guests or neighborhood kids a little scare as they approach your haunted mansion on Halloween night. You can find Halloween boo ghosts, witches, and other monsters at party supply shops that have motion and/or sound activated sensors. From shaking ghosts to shrieking monsters to witches that come alive, these creatures will give all of the little monsters approaching your house a good scare!

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