Halloween has always been a favorite holiday. I love dressing up for any occasion and, on Halloween, those who choose not to participate in the festive spirit are the odd ones out. Aside from the careful selection and assembly of my costume ...
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| Dia de los Muertos with Graham 2010 |
... one of my favorite Halloween activities is decorating my home. This
year, I kept a few of my favorites — fake spiderwebs, orange lights and
skeletons — and tried a few new ideas; some were successful some not so
much.
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| Webs, lights (real dogs) and fake rats! |
Graham and I invested hours in a project that I found on the Country Living website that looked absolutely amazing and easy to make. You print a template of a bat shape, buy black felt squares (about 25 cents each), cut out lots of bats then duct tape them to your house. Easy, right? Graham got creative and even cut out different sizes of bats to make them look like they were ascending into the night. We stuck them all up on the house and marveled at our work for about two hours ... then they all fell off. The felt wouldn't stick to the duct tape. The idea is great, but I think if we had added a dab of superglue between the bats and the duct tape it would have held up. Try it and let me know!
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| Fake bat fail |
The bats failed, but the Trash Bag Ghosts were a major hit. Graham's 3-year old daughter helped me out with these spooky decorations.
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| Trash Bag Ghosts |
Materials
White or light-colored plastic grocery bags
Small or medium sized trash bags
Trash bag twisty ties
Permanent markers
Masking tape
Scissors
String
What to Do
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| Rip a bag off the roll |
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| Stuff it with about four old grocery bags |
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| Twisty tie ghost's neck and draw faces |
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| Tape 3 feet of string to ghosts' heads |
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| Tie to tree branches |
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| Have fun! |
... and when Halloween is over, just throw your Trash Bag Ghosts in the recycling bin.
Here are some other ideas I found online and haven't gotten around to trying yet. If you do let me know how it goes!
I love this, but don't have a staircase. AND I found paper mouse silhouettes at the Dollar Tree, so that pretty much eliminates ALL the work on this project!
Mouse Motel: so easy, even I could probably carve it.
A few cut branches, pumpkins and fake blackbirds and this idea could be really eye-catching.
Happy Halloween!
I LOVED your costumes last year, and you have outdone yourselves with decor this year. Very impressive! The ghosts are my favorite.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a slacker now considering I buy a $3.99 pumpkin at Kroger and put in on the porch until Christmas. xo.
I save the pumpkin carving until the last possible moment. I'm so not good at it. Gordy is a pumpkin-carving artiste, though. I should post some of his work if we ever get around to buying a pumpkin. Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteI'm done carving pumpkins... They always rot and end up with roaches building colonies in them. This year I'm spraying my pumpkins white and painting silhouettes on them instead.
ReplyDeleteWe also cut out bats this year but we're hanging them from the roof of my porch instead of taping them to the siding. I'll let you know how it goes!
You forgot about Martha's Witch curtain we had last year! http://www.marthastewart.com/271722/witchs-curtain
ReplyDeleteThe previous owners of our new house left some fake tombstones and a skeleton arm...spooky!I still want to try and make fake eyeball ice cubes with radishes and green olives. I'll let you know if I doooo! And I agree with you super glue or hot glue for the bats. I'll let you know how our ghosts turn out, tooooo! Great post! HALLOWEEEEN!
AH! I DID forget our amazing Witch Curtain. I may have to put another one up really quick!
ReplyDeleteAwww this is a very fabulous post! I've been browsing the web for new and fresh halloween decorating ideas and just found some ideas here. Thanks dearest.. I really want my Halloween decorations to be fun yet spooky. LOL and also different... Thanks for sharing ideas...
ReplyDeletecheers and more power!