You can make memories as well as decorations this Halloween season, without breaking your budget.
Halloween comes in right behind Christmas as the most popular holiday for yard decorations.
A recent survey found that over 73 percent of Americans celebrate, spending a whopping $1.6 billion on decorations, $2.12 billion on costumes, $35 million on greeting cards and nearly $2 billion on Halloween candy. The average adult spends $44 on candy alone.
To create your spooktacular display, first choose a theme. Ghost party, graveyard, haunted house are some easy, eerie themes.
Ghost parties are particularly charming and inexpensive. You can create ghosts with simple sheets for the bodies and stuffing for the heads. Mount them on garden tools at different heights: tallest on the shovel; shortest on the a garden fork. Then think of a story line to enlarge on: ghosts at tea, ghosts at a grave, ghosts carving pumpkins.
Graveyards headstones can be more difficult to make, but search your house for items that might make a headstone. How about a Christmas wreath box turned upside down? Or lay out sheets or plastic in the shape of rectangles on the ground, then use old wood to make spooky crosses. Add carved pumpkins for light and extra spookiness. Don’t forget to check out the Internet for fantastic (and free) pumpkin carving patterns.
For a hauntingly fantastic front porch, use your garden fall foliage intermixed with pumpkins, gourds, fall flowers and a few spooky props, such as a scarecrow, spider webs, and bats.
Bats are easy if you look up patterns on the Web. A scissors and some heavy paper is all you need. Use cotton batting, stuffing from an old pet bed or pillow to stretch for cobwebs.
Construct a few weathered signs from old wood in your garage with Warning! or Wanted, Dead or Alive! or Open at Midnight! with the words written in “dripping” black or red paint.
Use those rusted chains from your garage to drape over porch railings, and create a faceless monster to sit on the porch swing.
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