Whether to decorate your house or your classroom for Halloween, the best choice of decorations are the ones that you make yourself. Home Halloween decorations are fun to make and are really cost efficient in the long run. The camaraderie shared with your friends and family is priceless while you make home Halloween decorations. It is a creative experience that every child will remember doing. In some households it has become a family tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation. With just a few materials you can turn your house or classroom into a gruesome, scary, and fun place to have a party or to invite trick or treaters.

The basics of home Halloween decorations are simplicity. Orange and black construction paper is a must. You also need Elmer’s glue, scissors, tape, and crayons or magic markers. The best way to start is to start at the top of the room. You can make a boarder to go around all four walls with a paper chain. Simply cut your orange and black construction paper into strips. Curl the strips into a ring and glue or staple them. They must be interlocked and should alternate in color from black to orange. If you really want to get gruesome you can add some blood red construction paper to the chain. To be more creative you can draw symbols of Halloween on each strip to give it more character and depth.

While still working on the top of the room, think of things that dangle from the ceiling. You can make cut outs of the skull and crossbones, witches, black cats, or ghosts from your construction paper to make some great scary figures. The paper is light enough so if there is even the slightest breeze your figures will move with it in a eerie fashion. To make this home Halloween decoration more creative, you may want to create mobiles with the figures by hanging your cut outs on descending sticks hung by fishing line or twine. If you have extra cutouts paste them on whole sheets of construction paper to give it a colorful back ground.

On your snack table, you can play a joke on your guests by decorating with Halloween food. You could glue all the candy corn together in a huge ball so that when a friend tries to take one, the whole glob of candy corn comes up in his hand. Think of eerie foods that you can serve like gummy worms and marshmallow eyeballs. Your can take the paper plates and draw monsters or scary images on them. Put on a scary movie in the background with the sound off. These can give the room an extra feature of the Halloween spirit. You might want to die your curtains orange or another Halloween color and put candles in the windows. From the outside the candle looks nice but from the inside the candle can cast eerie shadows on the curtain creating a cool special effect. The skies the limit with home Halloween decorations and your imagination and creativity will flourish once you get going.

By: Phil Sikes

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Ghosts, ghouls and goblins will soon be taking to the aisles of retail stores across the country to stock up on candy, costumes and thousands of other Halloween-related items retailers are making available this year. Retail stores often find themselves in competition with other nearby stores, doing whatever is necessary to capture the lion’s share in Halloween sales. But above and beyond products, it’s important to consider store decoration as a critical tool in Halloween sales success.

Decoration is a powerful tool because it speaks to two audiences very well. It acts as a beacon to people who have come to your store specifically to buy for Halloween. And it also reminds other shoppers that the holiday is approaching and they need to stock up on candy or get costumes for their kids.

Retailers sold an estimated $3.3 billion in Halloween merchandise in 2005, making it last year’s seventh biggest spending holiday. Retailers who want a share of that sum should get creative in their store layout and decoration process for success. We live in a world where consumers are bombarded by mundane marketing messages. That’s why it is so important to reach out to them in new ways each year to attract and maintain their attention.

The most important piece of advice is to be creative. Here are a few ideas to get your mind on the right path:

Say it with a Sign: Use signs throughout the store to lead customers to the Halloween department or just to get them in the mood for Halloween shopping. Signage reminds customers of the coming holiday and shows them that you’re prepared for it. Stand up and Stand Out: Do whatever you can to make your Halloween department more visible. Put it in the front of the store, and use large eye-catching displays throughout. If possible, decorate the outside of your store as well. Customers will notice the extra effort.

Deck the Halls: It’s a little early for Christmas carols, but this tip applies to Halloween as well. Use trim, decorations and other props to liven up the shelving units in the Halloween department. The more you can do to get customers excited about the holiday, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you.

By: Christopher Weis

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Are your Halloween decorations going to be tasteful or trashy this year? For some people, Halloween means an opportunity to go garish. But while it’s true that many people enjoy the jokey scariness and prank-filled atmosphere of this ancient festival, some just aren’t that into the whole horror theme that seems to dominate the season.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of color in the autumn palette to characterize your home Halloween decor if you don’t feel like resorting to the macabre. The fall brings a wide variety of gorgeous colors and fruits to inspire homemade decorations and provide materials for your craft projects and household designs.

After all, the holiday has its roots in an ancient festival to celebrate the transition of the seasons. So there are plenty of good looking harvest time themes to celebrate this time of year, with decoration ideas and recipes that evoke time-honored customs and rituals.

So if you love Halloween but don’t fancy jumping on the blood-curdling bandwagon of scary Halloween decorations, why not deck your house with seasonal trimmings and flourishes instead? Here are some suggestions for decorations and ornaments to keep you in the holiday spirit:

Pumpkin decorating ideas: carve them if you want — but they’ll probably last longer if you leave them intact and decorate them instead. Try painting funny faces and giving your pumpkin characters extra personality with a hat and scarf, or perhaps even some trendy shades for a ‘cool dude’ look. Seasonal collections of fruits and gourds: these look great when artfully arranged as a mantelpiece or table display. House decor: anticipate some of the elegant Christmas trimmings by putting up a garland or front door wreath that uses autumn colors. Make a Corn Dolly: this old tradition stems from a time when farmers wished to honor the spirits of the harvest and encourage them to return the following year to provide good crops. These figures, made from bundles of wheat, can be as simple or elaborate as you wish and can form part of a centerpiece or an outdoor decoration.

Even if you prefer to give the spooky side of Halloween a miss, you can still take the opportunity to celebrate the autumnal traditions that are traditionally associated with the festival.

By: Cece Lorenz

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If you are planning on throwing a party this Halloween, there are some essential Halloween decoration supplies that you should not be without! There are a number of decorative items that can really add appeal to your festivities. It is important to remember the overall theme that you want to use when shopping for these items.

If you have a certain color scheme when it comes to the festivities that you are planning, it is important to purchase decorative items that match this scheme. Naturally, the most common Halloween color scheme is orange and black. However, there are some greens, reds, browns, and other colors that can be used. Throughout this article, I will identify some Halloween decoration supplies that you may find particularly useful at your next Halloween party and/or festival.

One of the most basic Halloween decoration supplies are balloons. During the fall, you can find a lot of orange and black balloons. If you want a simple decorative item that will enhance the appearance of your celebrations, balloons are your best choice. There are also many types of plastic and paper napkins, plates, and cups that can enhance the party that you are throwing this fall.

While many would think of these items as necessities, they can also be very decorative – which is what makes them really ideal for a Halloween party. There are also lantern lights that can be purchased especially for Halloween. You can find ones that look like pumpkins, Frankenstein, witches, and more! This can really accessorize the festivities! You can also purchase stand alone sidewalk lights that can really brighten up the party area!

There are also Halloween decorative supplies that can be purchased for the foods that you make. For example, you can get molds that look like hands, brains, and other body parts in which you can make cakes and gelatin from. If you are at a loss when it comes to Halloween decoration supplies, try focusing on creating spooky and fun foods that your guests will indulge in.

They are sure to be a big hit! Many times, decorations are not just about the things you have hanging in and/or around your home. You can decorate the food that you create, or even the beverages that you make available! There are many things that you can do in order to ensure that your home or the other area you plan to have your Halloween party is appealing to your guests!

By: Daryl Plaza

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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!

By: Jeanette Joy Fisher

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