How to Decorate Your House for Halloween
Delight your local Trick-or-Treaters with spooky Halloween decor and lighting both inside and outside your haunted home!
You don't have to own a spooky old home to create one for Halloween. It just takes a little imagination and elbow grease.
To get the best effect, try and keep things looking as authentic as possible. It's better to begin collecting some real looking spooky decorations, than running out and piling up your shopping cart with plastic, unrealistic Halloween props. Tell your children you are beginning your family's Halloween Collection and that you want it to get better and better each year. That way they will understand when you walk right past the big plastic eyeball!.Keep your Halloween set-up fun for your children. Stop if they look bored or exhausted. You can always continue on with your decorating when they are fresh and looking forward to doing more to haunt their house and yard..Candles are VERY dangerous so keep an eye on them at all times..Light your house every night beginning Oct. 1st, BUT never, never leave your lights on when you leave your home..Keep blood and gore to a bare minimum so that all the tiny first-time Trick-or-Treaters won't get a fright they can't get over!.
Each year, for inspiration, my friends and I rent movies that feature haunted houses and ghostly happenings.
After you finish watching the film, we sit around and brain storm on how we can translate what we saw on film into our own Halloween haunted house display.
We've chosen to keep our haunted house decor more spooky than horrendous, with very little blood ( if any!), no bloody weapons, dripping brains, etc. Dry body parts or skeletons are fine for our Halloween display, as are flying bats, black birds, owls, cobwebs, coffins, tombstones, fog machines, spooky sound effects, jack-o-lanterns and flying ghosties.
The reason we've decided to build this type of Halloween collection is because we don't want to terrify the tiny Trick-or-Treaters that are experiencing their first Halloween night.
If your family name is McGruesome, then you would probably WANT to add all the blood and gory body parts and weapons you could afford! And this list of relatively tame Halloween decorating ideas would not appeal to you.
.Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions.Things You'll Need:
Floodlights with built-in lawn stakes (inexpensive versions are available at your local hardware store)
Red, Green and Blue Light Bulbs (for your floodlights)
Sheer off-white lining material from your local fabric shop.
Orange string lights for inside your windows.
Electric, plug-in pumpkins for your windows (vary the size and shape)
Faux tombstones (from your local Halloween store)
Real fall leaves (gathered in your neighborhood)
Unscented votive candles with long burn times (available at better candle retailers)
Glass votive holders
Faux feathered Ravens and Crows
Real pumpkins in various shapes and sizes.
Funkin brand faux pumpkins
Battery-powered tealights for inside your Funkins
Halloween mask of an old man or old woman. Be sure they look like they are sleeping peacefully
Pair of faux old hands for use with the mask
Old clothes to dress the "corpse" (shoes, a suit, long sleeve white shirt
2 quarters to place over the eyes on the mask
1 white lily or 1 deep red rose or 1 black rose (to place in the crossed hands of the "corpse")
1 flashing red emergency roadside lamp (available in the auto supply store) You'll use this underneath the white shirt for a "beating red heart".
Spooky music. Record your own moans and groans or buy a fun spooky sound effects tape, like Martha Stewart's "Halloween Sounds" tape and play it near the corpse.
Faux Coffin (made of cardboard or wood) These are available at Halloween stores. In the dark, the black cardboard coffin looks very real.
1 Hooting Owl (available at Halloween Stores) They hoot only when they detect movement. Very spooky!
Hand-made Cemetery Sign or one you purchase from a Halloween Store
Tackle your windows first. Take down your curtains in your front rooms and upstairs front windows (only the curtains visible on the front side of your house need to be switched-out).
Measure your curtains, add 4 inches and then cut lengths of your Sheer Lining Material (two panels per window). Sew a 2 inch header in the top. Don't worry about finishing the panel sides or bottoms. Next get your children involved in "customizing" each panel by cutting our chunks of the interior of each panel in random shapes and cutting jagged edges on the sides and bottom, so the curtains look like they've been hanging in an abandoned haunted house for decades. Place 2 panels on a tension rod and hang in your window.
Next, hang your tiny orange light strings in your windows. An easy way to do this is to drape them over the top of the tension rod you just used for your spooky house curtains. The glow of the tiny orange lights add to the ghastly look of your Haunted House Curtains!
After you hang your orange lights, begin positioning your electric, plug-in pumpkins in each window. After your done turn on both your pumpkins and tiny orange light strings and go outside to see how it looks from the street. If a pumpkin is too low, raise it up on a chair or box, so that it will be visible from the street.
Now you are going to prepare the "corpse" for "viewing". First, lay out the corpse on your porch, lawn, bed, dining room table or in your faux coffin and place the white shirt inside the suit jacket. Place the pants up under the bottom half of the jacket. Stuff old towels, rags or t-shirts inside the suit and pant legs until you have a "body". Then stuff the Old Man/Woman Halloween mask and place the neck inside the shirt collar. Then take the two faux hands, take the suit arms and fold they towards the beltline, place a wrist in each arm hole opening and place one faux flower between the crossed hands. Next place one quarter over each eye opening (as they used to do in Victorian times) If you were able to obtain a warning flasher lamp, place that inside the shirt where the heart would be and turn it to "red flash". It will make it look as though the corpse has a red beating heart. Place your corpse on your front porch, right inside a groundfloor bedroom window, on your long dining room table or in a faux coffin proped up in a corner of your front porch.
Next you're ready for your atmospheric sounds. Place your boombox tape/cd player somewhere near your corpse, but hidden from view. Load your CD and turn the sound down until you get a faint, creepy effect. If the music or sounds are too loud, much of the ghostliness is lost.
Time to create your cemetery. Pick one side of your front lawn and set out your tombstones. Place fall leaves around each tombstone, so it looks like it's been there for a VERY long time. Place a carved Funkin pumpkin with a bettery-powered tealight in front of a few tombstones, but not every one.
Lighting the exterior of your house. Set out your floodlights and point them at the two corners of the front of your house, so the different colored lights will cross over and create a third color. I like to use Red facing Blue to get purple in the middle. Then add some addition green floodlights pointed where needed.
Your last and final step is to carve, light and set-out your real Jack-O-Lanterns. Be very careful that they are away from flammables and keep the wicks on your votive candles trimmed to 1/4 inch. Voila! Your house is now "Haunted"!
To get the best effect, try and keep things looking as authentic as possible. It's better to begin collecting some real looking spooky decorations, than running out and piling up your shopping cart with plastic, unrealistic Halloween props. Tell your children you are beginning your family's Halloween Collection and that you want it to get better and better each year. That way they will understand when you walk right past the big plastic eyeball!.Keep your Halloween set-up fun for your children. Stop if they look bored or exhausted. You can always continue on with your decorating when they are fresh and looking forward to doing more to haunt their house and yard..Candles are VERY dangerous so keep an eye on them at all times..Light your house every night beginning Oct. 1st, BUT never, never leave your lights on when you leave your home..Keep blood and gore to a bare minimum so that all the tiny first-time Trick-or-Treaters won't get a fright they can't get over!.
