This time of year I look at the world through orange-tinted glasses. While I may only appear to be walking the dogs, deadheading flowers, or grocery shopping, I’m planning my Halloween decor. I’m studying broken tree limbs and produce aisle bins filled with root vegetables wondering—can I turn this into a Halloween decoration?
Rather than buy expensive and/or cheesy decorations, I prefer to utilize things around my house, reclaim objects and display vintage finds from my two favorite neighborhood haunts (pun intended)—Curiosities and Dolly Python.
Here are a few of my favorite tips for creating a realistically eerie haunted house.
1. Think old. Old is naturally creepy when displayed correctly. Old dusty jars, old books, old black-and-white photos in cracked picture frames set a spooky tone.
2. Let your silver tarnish. This is the easiest tip of all. Serve food on tarnished trays. Make sinister arrangements in your silver teapot using twigs, dead plants and inexpensive plastic flowers spray-painted flat black or gunmetal gray.
3. Stack your scariest books on the mantle and in bookcases. Leaving a stack of gardening magazines or the new Jodi Picoult book on the coffee table won’t frighten anyone. When I searched through my entire library, I discovered I had quite the collection of classic horror to display.
4. Paint-by-art and other still-life works have a gothic feel.
5. From your computer, print basic pictures of ravens, bats, skeletons, and tape them over your regularly displayed family photos (onto the glass). Leaving your child’s soccer picture on the mantle won’t set a Halloween mood.
6. Dumpster dive for treasures. I found this mannequin on my neighbor’s curb. Painted black, she greets our guests.
7. Buy a $0.99 bag of cobwebs at Party City. Stretched thinly over candles, books, pictures, everywhere, these look like the real thing.
8. Hang shredded cheesecloth (found at Target and fabric/craft stores) in doorways, windows, and over tables. Cover furniture with cheesecloth or white sheets like an abandoned house.
9. Old doll heads are creepy without doing anything.
10. Buy a bag of plastic bones – scatter them in your fireplace (unlit of course!), float them in your pool and/or display them in a large jar.
11. Display doll parts.
12. At flea markets, look for inexpensive vintage pictures of people, strange plants, science class human body posters, etc.
13. Hide glow sticks behind books and inside vases to create an eerie purple or green glow.
14. Cut bats from felt and duct tape to your porch around your front door. Free-hand the bat design or download a template. (Use stiff felt and be careful when removing…the tape can pull off paint.)
15. Download and play scary music. REALLY scary music. Like the selection at the end of this post…
Do you decorate for Halloween? What are your favorite Halloween decorating tips?
Do you decorate for Halloween? What are your favorite Halloween decorating tips?
Happy Halloween!
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
Musical Pairing:
Tubular Bells
Great tips. Talya & John’s house is really scary at Halloween! The house is haunted to begin with. You knew that already, didn’t you?
Great tips, thanks so much!
You’re welcome! Halloween is one of my favorite times (if you can’t tell)…:)
Scarily wonderful, Tayla!
I wish I could trick or treat at your house! I don’t do much Halloween decorating. I do have a jack-o-lantern and some ravens I add to my fall harvest decorations. Cute front porch bats!
Amazing tips. Your decoration ideas add authenticity that store bought pictures of pumpkins and black cats can never touch.
I am in the mist of making a full graveyard for the front yard. I LOVE Halloween! The bats you did are really quite cool.
Thanks for the bat idea! I’ve got mine made out of black construction paper all around the front door. Love them!
That mannequin is an awesome find! Great tips. Thanks for sharing them with us at Funtastic Friday!
Thanks, Angie!