Great Halloween Decorating Ideas

Outdoor Decorations

Create an outdoor graveyard by cutting tombstone shapes out of cardboard and spraying them with gray spray paint. Use paint or permanent marker to write creative epitaphs and fake names of the dead on the tombstones. Glue or tape wooden stakes to the back of the tombstones and secure them in the yard. Place a coffin-sized pile of dirt in front of one or two tombstones to represent freshly dug graves.

Instead of cutting faces and designs into real pumpkins, save plastic milk jugs for a couple of months. Paint the outside of the milk jugs orange. Use a box cutter to cut out jack-o-lantern faces and designs in the milk cartons. Place an LED light or battery-powered candle inside of each jug and line the driveway or walkway with the jugs to create a path for trick-or-treaters or party guests to follow.

Cover small trees or the lower limbs of larger trees with fake spider webs and plastic spiders. Purchase white treat bags or craft bags. Fill them 1/3 full with Halloween candy and tie securely with a ribbon. Poke two holes in the top of the bag and thread a ribbon through them to make a hook. Draw ghost faces on the bags. Tie them to the tree and allow trick-or-treaters to take one when they come calling or use them as party favors for guests. For a non-candy version, place a medium foam ball inside of the bag instead of candy.

Indoor Decorations

Add some spookiness indoors by replacing regular light bulbs with black light bulbs. Cover a fireplace mantle or the arms of a chandelier with fake spider webs and plastic spiders. Make black and white copies of framed pictures, cut out the eyes in the copies and replace them with led lights or red construction paper, then add them to the frames. Hang orange and black crepe paper throughout the house or make strings of garland by threading popcorn and candy corn onto fishing line.

To decorate with kids, cut out Halloween shapes from construction paper. Make a chain of ghosts from white construction paper or cut out bats from black construction and use fishing line to hang them from the ceiling. Cut out pumpkin shapes from orange construction paper and decorate them to look like Halloween jack-o-lanterns. Shapes on the jack-o-lanterns may be cut out and replaced with yellow construction paper to create the idea of a glowing pumpkin. Spray paint tree branches with black spray paint, place them in a vase and hang Halloween cut outs, fake spider webs and plastic spiders from the branches.