Tips for an awesome Halloween party: Decorations

Small note: I tend to stay away from the cheesy Halloween-themed decorations, and go more for a haunted house look. You save a lot of money by not buying the cardboard skeletons and plastic ghosts.

Outside

These decorations can all be done at any point before the party.

1. Lights: string twinkle lights around the entrance, along railings/porches, around main floor windows. Scatter mini strobe lights (available cheaply at dollar stores and party stores) around the yard; turn them on at night for a weird effect.
2. Cobwebs: string thin black ribbon among the branches of smaller trees to imitate spider webs.
3. Cobwebs/ghosts: dye cheesecloth black, wash and dry it (it will acquire a dingy grey color) and slightly shred it, and drape it over shrubs, hang it from low tree branches, and hang it from fences and railings (you want it to look like old rags, and then in the evening it will look like ghosts blowing in the wind).
4. Signs: use 1/4″ thick x 3″ wide by about 12″ long (found at the lumber yard, in scrap piles, or in scrap piles at the dump/in your basement); paint it black, use white paint to write (in unstead print) things like “DANGER” “BEWARE” etc. Put in your yard, at the end of the driveway, and wherever they will be seen by visitors/trick-or-treaters.
5. Dead branches: If you can find dead branches/tree limbs (they must be dead already, or they won’t preserve well), spray paint them black and (safely) prop them up in your yard, and tie them to railings/porches.

Tips:

• Don’t rake the dead leaves (if you have leaves) or mow the grass/pull the weeds/trim the bushes for a couple weeks before the party, if you can manage it (and not upset your Homeowner’s Association, if you have one). You want things to look sort of shabby and neglected. Old “junk” is useful too; an old rusty watering can and some old wooden toys with the paint peeling can make things look nicely neglected.
• If guests will be seeing your front yard on their way in to your party, try to move anything that smacks of “modern”. Temporarily relocate the kids’ plastic picnic table and the mobile basketball hoop. Anything that can’t be moved can be draped with ragged cheesecloth and old branches.
• Keep an eye out for anything you come across that will create an eerie effect in your yard. Anything dead-looking, bone-y looking, spooky, ghostly, etc.

Inside

Here’s where you get to have all sorts of fun. Ideas include:

Use cheesecloth that’s been dyed black, then washed and dried (it will acquire a dingy grey color and become slightly ragged from the dryer) to:

• drape over curtain rods (it comes in 7-foot lengths or so, so you can cover quite a lot) and give your house an “abandoned house” feel. It will also darken your windows so that if your party is during the day, it will get more “atmosphere”; if it’s at night, it will hide the indoor lights from approaching visitors.
• drape over buffet tables, china cabinets, TV cabinets, chairs/couches, etc. I drape it over virtually every surface in the party area to give everything a dingy haunted house look. Works great as a couch cover, and over buffet tables.
• drape over the curtain in your front door, if you have one. Those with sliding doors and vertical blinds can drape fabric over their blinds so people have to walk through it to come inside. Does a nice job of darkening the house from outside, making it spookier for trick-or-treaters.

If you can get Halloween fabric on sale (JoAnn always puts their fabric on sale in early October; you can wait until November 1 to build your supply for next year, but be warned that the inventory will be greatly reduced by then), purchase the stuff that looks like cobwebs and gauze (stay away from the shiny crap that looks like Halloween in a disco). Drape it, without hemming it, over any furniture that looks  too “modern” (that black Victorian chair you inherited from creepy Aunt Gertrude should probably be given a place of honor rather than covered up, but everything else could probably use some “eerie-ifying”).

If you don’t have one, get a copy of a Halloween movie (anything with lots of screaming is good; I recommend the “classic” Halloween/Friday the 13th movies, but stay away from modern gorefests like Saw). Put it on to play, turn the sound down until it’s barely audible, and drape lots of gauzy fabric over it (I found an orange sheer fabric that I layer with black to give everything a creepy glow). Leave it on during the party.

Create a cobweb on your ceiling using thin black ribbon and black thumbtacks. Find a large blank spot on your ceiling (it can have a light fixture in the center, though it will look less like a cobweb if it does). Tack thin black ribbon up in long strands from the center of the area in “spokes” so that it looks like the strands of a web. Tack it up in three or four areas, letting it drape down in between the tacks. (Estimated time: 1 hour)

If you do wind up using jack-o’-lanterns, use LED votives and drape gauzey fabric over the top of them to give them a little more creepiness.

Find dead branches and plant stalks (they must be dead or they’ll fall apart under the paint); use black spray paint or latex paint to paint them black; let dry and arrange in an appropriate vase/basket/etc. You can use black feathers hot glued around the edge of a vase to add some creepiness. (Estimated time: 1 hour)

Drape Halloween-colored (I favor purple) twinkle lights around your buffet table, inside china cabinets, basically anywhere it’s dark and you need some atmosphere.

After Bunker Hubby almost burned the house down with a candle, I switched over last year to those mini-LED votives; you can put them anywhere, even around little kids (though they can be a choking hazard, so be careful of that) and even if you forget them, the worst thing that happens is you find a dead LED light in a few months. Best yet, you can create all sorts of effects:

• Use them in jack-o-lanterns, in place of candles. They’re perfect for outdoors, because they won’t blow out in the wind.
• Line your walkway or driveway with LED votive lanterns (or even small paper bags; put a rock in the bottom of the bag to hold it down, then place the LED votive in it. You can forget about having to clean them up until morning, too.
• Fill a glass vase with sheer fabric; place some LED votives inside for a creepy effect.
• Place LED votives behind objects in dark rooms, such as bathrooms and in hallway niches, and let them flicker all night.
• Place them on high surfaces, such as the tops of cabinets, and let them reflect off the walls and ceilings.
• Place them inside of anything with glass doors, such as entertainment centers and china cabinets.

Rather than drape fabric over lamps, which could result in the fabric becoming too hot and igniting (if you use old-fashioned incandescent bulbs), drape the fabric over the lamp shade to create a darkened room. Better yet, they sell colored bulbs that darken rooms well; one or two lamps with dark bulbs, plus orange and purple twinkle lights, and your room should be nice and dim.

As I said above in the Outdoor section, keep an eye out for props you can use to add atmosphere to your rooms. These include old glass beakers (to fill with green-dyed water and some plastic eyeballs), creepy-looking mirrors, etc. And don’t forget to look around your house for things you can repurpose – vases, mirrors, spooky accessories and fabrics, etc. You’d be surprised what you can do with the addition of  some black ribbon, fabric, feathers, or black paint.

Other items which come in handy, if you have the budget for them:

• Black feathers (for scattering around the tables and arranging in vases for creepy effect.
• Small mirrors, for reflecting flickering LED votives.
• Fake blackbirds, good for posting up high on curtain rods (ready to swoop down and pluck out your eyeballs, no doubt).
• Vintage or new vases, in different shapes.
• Lanterns and candleholders.
• Black boas, for adding feathery accents.
• Any “spooky-looking” accessories.

Supplies:

Lights: Halloween twinkle lights run about $3 at your local big box store. After Halloween, of course, they’ll be even cheaper. Mini strobes can be found for $2-$4 at dollar/party stores. Colored lightbulbs run about $3 per package.

Ribbon: A spool of ribbon is about $.50 to $1.00 at a crafts store. Again, if you look for sales or buy right after the season, you’ll get it cheaper.

Sign supplies: Scrap wood can be free if you find it, otherwise you should be able to get all you need for less than $20. Spray paint costs about $4.00 a can, and latex paint is even cheaper (calculating by volume).

Cobwebs/gauzy fabric: Cheesecloth costs about $2.00 per package, and Rit dye runs about $3.99 a package (this should dye at least 5 packages of cheesecloth). Other Halloween fabric can run anywhere from a couple of bucks for several yards (on clearance), up to $10/yard and up. On average you should expect to spend about $3.00 per yard.

LED votives can be a bit pricey; if you can find them for $2.00 or less per package of two, you’ll do pretty well.

Hope these ideas help! Remember, if you have any ideas of your own, I’d love to hear about them. Post them in the comments.