Decorating for Halloween

Decorating for halloween is half the fun of the halloween holiday. When I was a child we used to purchase fake cobwebs and hang them in all the corners and window corners. We'd then get some black plastic spiders and pin them into the spider webs.

At night it looked every eerie and spooky and it gave the perfect atmosphere! We also put some cardboard cutouts of witches, vampires and ghosts in the windows and in doorways. To decorate the outside, we would use some of my father's old clothes and stuff them with leaves from the trees to make a scarecrow.

We'd then carve a pumpkin and use it as the head of our scarecrow! We also added a small radio that played scary music and this alone scared half the children away! Luckily they knew we had some halloween candy waiting for them beyond the spooks.

Today there are many different outlets where you can express your halloween decorating creativity! No matter which type of decoration you choose to start with, be sure to include your children in the decision making process, and the final halloween decorating process.

The following are some recommendations for how to make the most of your halloween decorating:

• Start planning your halloween decoration theme early on!
• Write down how much you plan to spend on Halloween decorations, and stick to your budget, no matter how cool that extra hanging skeleton would look in your entrance.
• Try to make as many of your halloween decorations yourself, or outsource the creation to your kids. They will love making scary spiders and orange pumpkin cutouts.
• Place all the inside halloween decorating props first, and leave the outside items for the last few days before Halloween. You don't want your scarecrow to get rained on, and if you put your decorations out too early, the local kids won?t be scared and surprised on Halloween night.
• Don't focus on just one sensory field, play scary ghost music in the background, add dried leaves to the ground to make the pathway uneven and spooky, and keep your visitors in the dark to add that extra scary touch.
• Halloween lights are nice, but they are not a staple of Halloween decorating like for Christmas lights. So save your money and create fun paper-mache decorations that look good in the dark shadows of your home.
• Keep your visitors on their toes, by changing your halloween decorations each year. You can recycle older decorations by putting them in different spots, or just keeping them in your own closet during alternating years.

Happy Halloween decorating!