do you decorate for the holidays?

Question

need some idea's for halloween theme tired of the fake spiderwebs and errie fogg machines any help out there

Answer 1

Absolutely. I have a graveyard with inexpensive tombstones (you can also make your own) as well as more expensive ones. Put out some cheap ($7) plastic skeletons, maybe stain them and spray polyurethane to waterproof them for the look of zombies rising from the grave. A little potting soil goes a long way in a cemetary. LED tea lights help lend atmosphere, but blue floods are excellent. Get a theme and go with it - that will help get the creative juices flowing. There are lots of inexpensive props out there that are an easy start. You can also make a lot - like haunted portraits or a head in a jar. It doesn't have to cost much to make a haunt that everyone will remember! (especially if you're the only one creating the haunt! - we draw upwards of 300 ToTs each year). I'm doing a lot of other things, but what you do is limited by imagination, space and cost. Much of what you might like to use can be made and the information is out there.

Answer 2

I have 2 themes for my Halloween decorations. The Nightmare Before Christmas and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
They are both creative and fun.
With my Dia de los Muertos decorations I usually have to explain it to people that aren't familiar with it.
Though the subject matter may be considered morbid from the perspective of some other cultures, celebrants typically approach the Day of the Dead joyfully, and though it occurs at the same time as Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls Day, the traditional mood is much brighter with emphasis on celebrating and honoring the lives of the deceased, and celebrating the continuation of life; the belief is not that death is the end, but rather the beginning of a new stage in life.
You can also put up a Halloween tree. At a florist supply shop I found bare branches without leaves or bark and spray painted it black then I found a black bucket and filled it with black rocks to secure the tree. Next I hung creepy ornaments and mini black lights from the branches. Target is a good place to find nicer looking Halloween stuff.

Answer 3

Yes I do decorate for the holidays (Christmas, Halloween, Easter and a little for Thanksgiving). I just moved into my first apartment with my bf so now I get to buy all of the decorations and take care of the decorating. Anyway, there are soooo many halloween stores you can go to. There are usually seasonal halloween stores that will open for the time being. Instead of the spider webs and fogg machines, why not buy a whole bunch of halloween candles and light them? How about head stones, coffins or hanging decorations like mummies and ghosts? They even sell like 6ft displays of skeletons and monsters. Try for decorations that make noise and are sound activated. Good luck.

Answer 4

It's easy to go to any old store and buy decorations, but I actually don't recommend this because it tends to be overpriced and cliche. If anything, just get the basics. I think the trick is taking all those basic halloween decorations, like spiderwebs, fog machines, strobes, skeletons, etc. and using them to build something unique. Think of them as the base of a soup and you add all the rest of the flavor based on your taste, budget, and time. Also, you can get a lot of basics for cheap at a thrift store, swap meet, or garage sale: dresses to make into ghosts, old chandeliers, mirrors, paintings, etc.

Narrow down your theme. For example, I like to stay away from the gorey stuff. I want something more kid-friendly. I choose themes like haunted nursery (giant spider attacking a cobweb-covered old dollhouse filled with creepy lights and dolls) or halloween forest (I make several halloween trees in the front with those plastic jack-o-lanterns hanging from them with twinkling lights inside, and various owls, crows, insects, creepy beasts, etc - people love it). This year I'm also working on integrating vintage halloween images into my decorations.

You can also start with colored flood lights. They create a great spooky backdrop and help create an overall ambient feel. Pick up some metal clip-on lights and the flood lights from home depot or lowes, etc. Red for something devilish, green for bio-hazard, blue for ghostly ethereal, etc.

Another basic decoration that is often left out is sound. Some people go for motion activated devices with sound or doormats, or a generic halloween or monster mash CD. I have a great Halloween CD called "The Haunted House" with classic Halloween themed blues songs from the 1920s to 1940s and I get lots of compliments every year. Here's a link to it on amazon so you can sample some of the songs if you're interested:

http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-House-Tracks-Make-Night/dp/B00004Y20Y/ref=sr_1_24/104-4198945-7082351?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1190312999&sr=1-24

If you have any time, get crafty! Builds some of your own props or decor and you will probably have more fun and take pride in the result. For me, the payoff comes when trick-or-treaters tell me how cool it all looks. This year I'm building a paper-mache hot air balloon that will look like a big glowing jack-o-lantern or pumpkin and a black cat with a red party hat on sitting in it. I have a spinning motor to make it twirl around. I also have some large scale paintings (just going to use posterboard and tempera paint) of cat, witch, etc. faces where the eyes move and watch you as you walk towards and away from them.

Good Luck!

Answer 5

According to all of the magazines I've seen & sites, spiders are the decorating theme for Halloween this year. Check out Martha Stewart for halloween ideas; she goes all out every year & has tons of ideas for great decorations.
Look in Party City or Halloween Express stores for decorations that suit you. Lillianvernon.com has great stuff, as well. Halloween-online.com, or try halloween.com or everythinghalloween.com - all of those will have lots for you to choose from. Good luck & Happy Halloween!!

Answer 6

Get some of your old clothes and a good mask. stuff the clothes ( I used my laundry to stuff the one last year, lol) It makes I life size ghoul for your party. The dollar stores and wall mart are great places to get stuff. So are thrift stores for costume stuff. Candle sticks, garden gargoyles, Cover your furniture with old fabrics anything red or gold is really great. Pumpkins by the dozen. Scatter leaves on the floor, make fake tombstones, Put some old dead branches around. Go nuts and make it look like a set from a cheep horror movie.

Answer 7

There are lots of ideas - just depends on how much money you want to spend! We make almost all of our own stuff - complete graveyard, mausoleum, tombstones we make ourselves, etc.
In the garage we have a diorama of sorts - the theme is haunted mine shaft.
Something else that's we've done on the front porch is get one of those huge spider webs made out of rope/yarn. Then get a fake skeleton, completely wrap it in the white spider web stuff that comes in bags. Put it on the yarn spider web. Looks like the spider has caught the person and wrapped it in webbing to consume later. Looks pretty cool and it's pretty inexpensive.

Answer 8

I have a 4ft spider made of lights on a web I'm hanging from my front window. I also have a purple-lighted spooky tree, a pumpkin made of lights, and a cat made of lights for the yard. I'm thinking about getting some jack o'lantern lights to hang around the yard as a border, or maybe on one of the trees. I also have a gothic lantern I hang on the front porch and a ghostly candelabra for one of the windows.

Answer 9

Well what part of the world are you in? I'm in Portland, Oregon. You could buy some pumpkins and do some surface carvings on them and then paint them with craft paint so they look really wicked and wild crazy.
Or you could get the mini pumpkins and cut the bottom and the tops out and carve lil bitty designs on them and then put mini candles in them and hang them or string them along the walls of your room with red crepe paper or go someplace like Joanna Fabric store or look it up on the net.
Have fun......tons of options out there.....

Answer 10

you can go to any store- wally world, kfart and all- they have tons of stuff- headstones are spooky, replace your porch light with a eery orange or blackish light, there was a ghost hanging from the tree that shook when it was activated by sound, stuff like that- depends on where you go.