Frugal Halloween: Decorations

One of my favorite childhood memories is of a Halloween party my parents hosted at our house for my sisters and our friends.  Considering my parents invented frugality, all the decorations were done on the cheap.  My recollection is of the entire garage and basement transformed into a haunted, Halloween spectacular. 

They had saved huge appliance boxes and duct taped them together to form a scary maze with dead-ends that housed 'tricks'.  A couple of the tricks included peeled grapes to mimic anuculated eyeballs and a bowl of cold spaghetti for brain matter.  The tunnels were kept dark with the occasional air/light window and accompanying horrifying Sharpie picture on the wall.  Threads or yarn was hung from the ceiling of the boxes, so you'd have to brush them away like spiderwebs as you crawled through.  Of course, eerie background music and a black light helped set the mood.

If by chance you don't have the time, inclination or abundance of cardboard boxes to pull off the haunted maze, don't despair.  With a little time, planning and surveying of the house, there are tons of DIY Halloween decoration ideas.  Here are a few.  Of course Pinterest has a billion more.

• Construction paper silhouettes:  Cut out scary cat, bat, rat silhouettes and hang them throughout the house.  Here is an example the gremlins and I made today.

Find clipart online of your animal of choice. Enlarge in Word if needed. Print. Cut out.

Trace stencil onto black construction paper.  Cut out.

Tape onto a wall and look forward to scaring someone!

• Ghost balloons:  Drape a white sheet or trash bag over a balloon.  Cinch it around the neck with a ribbon or twist-tie.  Draw a scary picture on the face.  Hang from the ceiling, vent or doorway.

• No carve jack-o'-lanterns:  Cut out eyes, nose, ears, mouth, etc from magazines and glue them onto your pumpkin.  This is a no mess way to decorate, while preserving the longevity of the pumpkin so it will last until Thanksgiving.

• Cardboard graveyard:  Cut out gravestones from cardboard or cereal boxes.  Paint them gray or black and write out your epitaph.

• Spider web:  Form a large spider web using white Christmas lights or extremely thick white yarn.