Aside from perhaps Christmas, no other holiday gives you as much opportunity to let your imagination run wild as Halloween. Be as creative or as creepy as you want with our top tips below. You don’t need to splurge, most of these spook-tacular decorations can be made from things you have lying around the house. Read on for more!
It All Begins Outdoors
While most people start from the inside out, the simple fact is that you need to get the atmosphere right from the get-go. Turn up the fear factor with these bloodcurdling decorative ideas for your front yard:
- Cover the ground with old crunchy fall leaves. If you’re lucky enough to have a few trees in your front yard, avoid racking your lawn for a few days to make the most of what you have. If you’re feeling particularly creative, find a larger pile and have a pair of old boots sticking out of it to make it look like you’re hiding a corpse in there.
- Channel your favorite horror movies by turning your lawn into a graveyard – a tombstone here, another there, yet another completely crooked and falling down. Create a few mounds of disturbed earth for added effect. If you have trees, drape some fake cobwebs over the branches. For an added bonus, you can find fake spiders in almost any joke shop or dollar store.
- Blood spattered scarecrows, a spooky skeleton (or just some skulls rolling around) are great alternatives to traditional jack o’lanterns (we’ll be keeping those for later)
- Don’t underestimate the power of a scary scarecrow. You can get a special Halloween
- If you really want to do it up for Halloween, have your car parked out on the lawn. Paint the windows to make it look like they’re cracked, and make it look like a person is trapped inside by putting in a dummy with its hands pushed against the windows.
What Brave Soul Dares Approach?
Now that you’ve set the stage by decorating the front yard, you can now focus on giving your guests a taste of what awaits them inside. Your front porch is the perfect place to ramp up the scare factor with these fear-inducing ideas:
- Add more spiderwebs to the porch. If you’re feeling especially fiendish, use darker yarns that won’t show up – you might be lucky enough to have a few frightened guests get tangled up in your web.
- Add some cutouts of black cat silhouettes to ramp up the tension. You can also add other accessories like a bucket of dead white flowers and tree branches.
- Add the obligatory jack o’lanterns here. They can be carved with ghoulish designs, or painted black, silver, or with glitter.
- Hang a ghost from your porch. Just cut some holes in an old sheet and throw it over an old beach ball that you hang from the ceiling.
- If you have an old rocking chair, cover it with spider webs and put it in a place where it will rock and creak as much as possible.
Dare You Take a Peek?
The last step before we go inside, don’t forget to decorate your front door and windows. Adding just a few ghoulish touches to your entrance way and windows will give your house the perfect haunted look. Here are a few things to try:
- Splatter some fake blood on your front door (Just make sure it can easily come off).
- If you’re really going all out, make it look like you’ve boarded up your windows by sticking some light wood beams over the glass and sticking them to the glass with duct tape. This will make your house look abandoned, and therefore spooky.
- Take an old mannequin and cover it in a formal black or red dress. Stick it in a window that everyone will see, preferably a second-floor or attic window if you have one. Shine a flashlight under the mannequin to create a ghostly effect.
What Horrors Await Inside?
If you’ve gotten this far, you are halfway done to creating the perfect spine-chilling venue for a Halloween party. Join us next time where we’ll see how we can add more boos to your indoors!
