Many people enjoy using the Halloween season to add spooky touches to their home décor, capturing the flavor of the season and making things more fun for trick-or-treaters.
Simply going to the store and buying a bunch of Halloween decorations, however, can be quite expensive. Consider using items from around your house and a few dollars’ worth of craft products from the store to make some novel and low-cost Halloween decorations that add the perfect October touch.
Here are simple ideas that you can use to decorate your home for the fall season at minimal cost.
— Emphasize autumn.
— Make a scarecrow.
— Make ghosts from white holiday lights and milk jugs.
— Make a bedsheet ghost with a balloon.
— Make black and white window hangings from paper.
— Make spooky science experiment jars from old glass containers.
— Put spooky light bulbs on your front porch.
— Make cobwebs or spiderwebs from cotton balls and hair spray.
Read on for more details on how to locate and create low-cost Halloween decorations for your home and porch.
[See: 10 Ways to Save More in 2019.]
Emphasize autumn
You can create an inexpensive Halloween vibe by focusing on harvest and autumnal themes with your decorating. Use items such as leaves, which you can gather for free, and whole pumpkins for the basics to keep the costs low, and simply accent those elements with more spooky items like the ones described below.
Make a scarecrow
A scarecrow is a wonderful and inexpensive way to decorate your yard for the season, keeping in line with the autumn theme while adding a bit of spookiness. Find some old clothes and stuff them with leaves and straw. Pose the full scarecrow in the yard with some support. A couple of big sticks in the ground fed up through pant legs and a stick through the arms work perfectly. You can even put a small pumpkin on top for the head if you’d like.
Make ghosts from white holiday lights and milk jugs
If you have a bunch of white holiday lights already on hand, use them for Halloween to make spooky ghosts. Cut a small hole in the bottom of a milk jug and stuff 10 bulbs into the jug, then use black paint to draw a jack-o’-lantern face on the jug. Line several up side by side with a longer string to have a whole row of ghosts.
[See: 50 Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2019.]
Make a bedsheet ghost with a balloon
Blow up a balloon, put it in the center of a bedsheet, group up and tie off the bedsheet below the balloon, then tie it with a rope to a tree or other post in your yard. A little bit of wind will make your ghost look spooky while a still night can also make it look dreadful, and the cost is basically nothing.
Make black and white window hangings from paper
You can use almost any paper, even scrap paper, to make spiders and bats for window hangings. Cut them out of paper you have on hand, then color the paper black with a marker. Bat and spider outlines are easy to form.
Make spooky science experiment jars from old glass containers
Take items from around your home, pop them in glass jars, fill them with water and a few drops of food coloring and put them on your front porch railing for spooky science experiment jars. Try filling one up partially with cooked spaghetti chopped into little pieces, or put a doll’s head in another one. If you have a plastic spider or bug, that’s another good choice.
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Put spooky light bulbs on your front porch
Get a small container of glass paint from a hardware store or craft store and paint a light bulb or two red or orange, then install that bulb on your porch or another spot visible from the street. It’ll cast a spooky orange or red glow around your porch and will wonderfully accent the experiment jars described above. Be sure to follow the instructions exactly when using glass paint.
Make cobwebs or spiderwebs from cotton balls and hair spray
Take a handful of cotton balls and stretch them into whatever patterns you like. You can make radial spider webs or droopy hanging cobwebs. If you need the webs to hold their shape, spray them down in a well-ventilated space with some hair spray, which will hold their shape well enough for a few days of spooky fun.
These techniques will give you low-cost Halloween decorations and seasonal twists to surprise and delight neighbors and trick-or-treaters. Happy Halloween.
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Cheap Ways to Decorate Your Home for Halloween originally appeared on usnews.com
