Devilish Decorations

Whatever your budget, everyone wants to creep out their neighbors! ...how about some almost-free stuff???
Get permission, if necessary, before messing up your yard!

Cut cardboard boxes into the shape of a tombstone, and paint it gray or black paint if you have it... then, with chalk, write the names of famous dead people, or make some names up! Add silly epitaphs like "Here lies Johnny Yeast. Pardon me for not rising" Prop up the toumbstones with sticks into your yard, or lean them up against trees.

Other yard ideas...spread spider-webbing all over everything... the bushes, the stucco...bricks... stretch it out good, a little can go a long way... when you think you have stretched it enough, go back and spread out the bulky white blobs ...

Repeatedly throw white toilet paper in the trees... (get permisson!)

Use sidewalk chalk to draw monsters and pumpkins on your sidewalk and driveway (washes off easily)

Get a bunch of cardboard boxes, all the same size, and stack them up and paint them to look like a large brick wall - great for hiding cars or other non-scary and non-movable items - or blocking access to certain areas - build a box wall!

Create luminaries from tin cans. Poke holes in halloween shapes, light a candle inside the can. Line the driveway or sidewalk to help trick-or-treaters find their way.

Make tissue-paper ghosts that have felt-maker faces!!... take a square kleenex or peice of tissue, wrap it over a wad of newspaper, tie the 'neck' with a twist tie or string, and use a felt maker to draw an O for the mouth - for larger ghosts - use white plastic grocery bags, with a balloon underneath for the head.

Wear a scary costume ...and when you answer the doors for trick-or-treaters, make them wait a few seconds... (wait until they might ring the bell again!) then answer the door quickly and loudly!
AAAUUGGGHHHH! the kids will SCREAM!!
I keep my front door slightly ajar, so that the trick-or-treaters don't hear me coming!!!

Set out a boom-box in the window with creepy sounds playing

Indoors, set an inexpensive flicker bulb, or strobe light inside a window that is visible to your trick-or-treaters. The light alone coming from inside the house is creepy. For additional creepy shadow effect, cut a scary silhouette shape out of dark paper, and tape it in the window with the light behind it.

Whatever you do, start early!!
People will plan ahead to come trick or treating at your house, when they see your decorations in the weeks before Halloween!
Do a LOT of decorating,
the more the creepier! ...
and have fun!!!

Halloween Decorations Anyone Can Do
By Gail Leino

Halloween decorations can be a lot of fun to create on your own without spending a lot of money. Here are a few suggestions:

• Turn your home windows into a spooky display by creating silhouettes of haunted houses, skeletons, black cats and more out of black construction paper or dark colored garbage bags. Carefully cut the silhouettes out and tape up to the windows to give an eerie holiday feel to the window. Of course, they look especially spooky after dark with the light from inside shining through. Have fun!

• Rolls of Danger and Caution Tape can be used to outline porches or door ways. Add an official looking sign printed on a computer (and maybe laminated) that says “This house is guarded by an attack ghost” or something else clever for a few extra laughs.

• Lighting effects can be made by exchanging regular light bulbs for colored bulbs, blue, orange, yellow, red, or even using black lights can make for mood setting party fun. Replacing your porch light or garage bulb with a black light can be very spooky, especially if you place some small glow in the dark items just within the range of the black light.

• Take last year’s rubber mask (or a scary one from this year) and stick it into a large jar that is full of water. Add a few drops of red food coloring to the water and it looks really gruesome!

• If the severed head specimen isn’t your style, consider a ghost centerpiece. Find a large clean squash (butternut, pumpkin or other funky shape), wash it, dry it good and paint it with white acrylic paint. Then, after the white paint is completely dry, use a black marker to draw the ghostly features on it. Make more than one – like 3 or 5 of different shapes and sizes and display them in a bunch – they look great!

With little effort and minimal cost, your house can be a spooky showcase that all the trick-or-treaters will be anxious to stop by.

Mrs. Party... Gail Leino is the internet's leading authority on selecting the best possible party supplies (http://partysupplieshut.com), using proper etiquette, and living a healthy life while also teaching organizational skills and fun facts. The Party Supplies Hut has lots of party ideas with hundreds of free coloring sheets, printable games, and free birthday party activities. Halloween Party Games (http://halloween-party-fun.com), party planning tips, decorations, costume ideas, recipes, printable activities and free coloring pages.Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gail_Leino
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Halloween Decorating Tips - Spooky Fun and a Tree for Halloween?
By Jeanette Joy Fisher

Halloween is a time when anyone can be a kid at heart. You can celebrate the spookiest holiday of them all to your heart's content without having to break the bank in the process. With a little thought, you can create great-looking Halloween decorations. You're limited only by your imagination.

Spooky Halloween Decorating Tips

Halloween can be a wonderful time for decorating, since it's so different from any other holiday, and it has really taken off as a chance to let people's imaginations run wild over the past few years. Here are a few ideas for adding some spooky Halloween spirit to your home:

You can easily make a very attractive display by carving holes in apples the size of votive candles and then allowing the candles to float in a large glass punch bowl, galvanized metal bucket, or tub. It can be especially effective when all the lights are dimmed.

If you're having a Halloween get-together, you can keep the punch cold by freezing water in a rubber glove and then adding it to the punch bowl. It will effectively keep the punch from getting too warm while adding a wonderfully macabre touch to your table decorations.

Another fun thing you can do to dress up your punch bowl is to add plastic spiders and other creepy crawly things to your ice cubes by simply adding them to the water when you put your ice cube trays in the refrigerator. They'll add a nice eerie touch of holiday spookiness to your Halloween party.

On the outside of your home, make sure to add plenty of dry leaves around the porch. Their crunch and dead looks will make your Halloween decorations even more convincing, lending a haunted-house look to your holiday décor.

A Tree for Halloween?

Another unusual, but effective decoration is a Halloween tree. Manufacturers turn out strings of outdoor lights for almost every holiday nowadays, so it won't be hard to find orange lights and other spooky decorations for your tree. Just check your local home improvement center or large department store. Your kids will also have a wonderful time helping to create skeletons, bats, witches, and all the other assorted characters that have a special place at Halloween time to hang on your tree. Take a standard artificial Christmas tree as your starting point and then let your imagination run wild.

If you have railings on your porch, you can also find Halloween-colored garland to thread through the rails at the same store where you found your Halloween lights for the tree. It can be especially potent when combined with your spookily decorated Halloween tree.

There's an ever increasing variety of Halloween-related decorating choices to add spookiness to your holiday décor. You can put a special welcome mat in front of your door, you can get stick-on figures for your windows, you can get motion sensitive manikins that will make scary noises and move around when someone gets too close, and you can even buy fog machines to turn your front porch into one of the spookiest places in town on Halloween night.

Your decorations don't need to be expensive, however. Even small touches like painting river rocks along your walkway orange and adding figures or phrases like "boo" can help add to the overall ambience of your Halloween decorating. If you have a tall tree branch hanging in your garden, hang a stuffed sheet "ghost" and attach it to a hidden rope. Have someone hide and pull the rope back and forth to make the ghost move.

The bottom line: have fun with it. Halloween may be thought of as a children's holiday, but it can make for some of the most fun decorating that an adult can do every year!

Jeanette Fisher helps home makers have fun decorating their homes. Free holiday decorating tipsHome Decorating Interior Design Ideas at http://JoytotheHome.comCopyright © 2006 Jeanette J. FisherArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeanette_Joy_Fisher http://EzineArticles.com/?Halloween-Decorating-Tips---Spooky-Fun-and-a-Tree-for-Halloween?&id=339481