When you take the kids out trick or treating around your neighbourhood you can’t fail to be amazed by some of the outdoor and indoor decorations that some dedicated followers of Halloween have put together.
Next up, you’ll wonder exactly how they found the components – and the time – to get it all done before the big night itself. Chances are, most of their displays weren’t that hard, so with a bit of online and junk-store shopping, alongside a smattering of craft-smarts, you too can wow this year’s crop of willing victims…sorry, trick or treaters!
Invest in some welcoming signs
Heading to My Security Sign and ordering some fun and welcoming Halloween garden signs is a great way to let people know you have a big stash of candy waiting for them inside. Best of all, the only skill you need is the ability to use a sense of humour and a buy now button!
Go to town with the spiders’ webs
This couldn’t be easier. Order or shop for an industrial amount of fake spider webbing, locate a few fixing points around the front of your house – from the roof to the ground and beyond – and get fixin’! Tree branches, hooks, garden furniture and rocks can all serve as anchor points and when the web is spun, you can scatter its victims around it. Buy the biggest fake spider you can find and place it in the centre, as well as some gruesome looking egg sacs.
Create a sinister ambience with a smoke machine
Again, this couldn’t be easier – using the dark magic of online shopping you can source a user-friendly smoke machine and the fluid then use it to spread a creepy mist around your garden. If you can get hold of some fake gravestones as well, you’ve got the set of an old-fashioned horror film right there outside your front door.
Have a skeleton campfire
Buy some plastic skeletons from the decorations aisle in your nearest emporium – three or four should do – dress them as cowboys and arrange them on logs around a (fake) campfire. The campfire is easy to make, just stack branches and twigs around some super-bright yellow and orange LED lights. You could leave a couple of spaces on the logs free for the living so they can take photos with their skinny new friends.
Hang loads of bats from your trees
You can have some fun here, because you could find some glow-in-the-dark bats, or ones whose eyes light up so that people can see them and avoid bumping into them. Then you could add some that don’t glow in the dark so that people can’t avoid bumping into them…
Carve some pumpkins
You have to, really, or it’s not truly Halloween. You don’t have to restrict yourself to scary faces, though. Or, indeed, to classic orange carver pumpkins. See if you can collect together lots of different sizes, shapes and colors of pumpkins, squashes and gourds so that there’s variety and interest for people as they walk up your garden path.
