DIY Halloween Decorations

Last year, my kiddos and I made ghosts to hang from the eaves of the front porch. Just blow up some balloons, stuff one inside a white trash bag, gather it just below the balloon with a rubber band or other tie, and draw a face with black marker. The kids had a blast and they swayed in the breeze and seemed to float like real ghosts!

Buy some orange lunch bags for you and your son to color faces on them with a black sharpie like you'd do to a pumpkin. (Very cheap!) Weigh them down with sand, dirt or rocks so they don't tip over. Line your front walk or porch with them. Then on Halloween night (only if you are going to be home during the trick or treat time to watch them) put a tea light in each one of them. They look so pretty. But NEVER leave them unattended. You don't want any accidents. Even better, they now have little pumpkin lights that do not have a flame. Those would be GREAT! No flame! You can even get creative and buy some green ones and color monster faces on them or black ones and paint white witch faces on them. Let your son be creative.

Last year my daughter and I made some ghosts for our tree out front. I took empty plastic soda and water bottles and drilled a couple of holes in the bottom. Then we ran some yarn thru to use as the hanger. We glued cheesecloth to the bottom of the bottle around the holes to make rough ghost shapes. Then we just hung them from our tree. We are getting ready to make some this weekend and this year we are going to use some glow in the dark paint on them so that they really shine. After Halloween we just pulled the cheesecloth and string off and put the bottles back into the recycling bin.
Another one that my Mom and I used to do was to make a leaf man. We took a pair of my Dad's worn out jeans and one of his worn out long sleeve shirts. We tied off the arms and legs and the waist of the shirt and then stuffed them with leaves. Then you just prop them up, carve a pumpkin for the head and you are done. Some years we used accessories like worn out boots or shoes, gloves for hands, old glasses, paper clips bent around the pumpkin teeth for braces. My Dad would burn ours around Guy Fowlkes day but I don't think you can do that anymore with the ban on burning trash and leaves.

Take two big black garbage bags and stuff them with newspaperor or leaves. Put them together in the yard. Against one or the bags lay 4 pair of stuffed black pantyhose like legs. Take a white garbage bag and cut eyes and fangs and tape onto head. Voila!!! INstant spider.
I keep black hose with runs in them for this.
You can then hang that spider web gauze near your spidey. My kids love this and we do it every year.
Also window paints on your front windows with some of those battery operated window candles. Or have single sheets with black fabric painted scenes, witches, cats, ghosts and hang them in the windows.
Get lots of that gauzey stuff. We hang it all over and it's relatively cheap.
Change your outside lights into the purple black lights.
Stuff a pair of overalls adna flannel shirt and use a pumpkin as a head and have a scarecrow. You'll need some straw but not a whole bale if you stuff the body with paper or large sheets. Put a box in the body up near the openign to rest your pumpkin head on.

Check out http://familyfun.go.com/ They have some great ideas.

I wish I knew how to make Halloween decor also. The only thing I have done this year is plant some mums, bought little pumpkins to place around the flowers and I have a Happy Harvest sign in my garden area. I'm hoping to look at what other people respond with so that I can spruce up my house this year.

If you go to a craft store like Michaels, ( I am not sure if they have that here),Hobby Lobby or even the craft section of wal-mart they have things made up and a list of supplies needed. Choose something that your son will be able to do. We made ghost out of small suckers and kleenex. We used cheaper generic ones, they worked better than the softer ones. We put rubberbands to hold the kleenex on and a fine tip marker to draw eyes. I also cut out lots of pumpkin shapes and let the kids draw faces on. We also cut triangles out of black construction paper and glued them on.

My daughter and I just decorated our tree out front with paper towel ghosts. We used tissues to stuff inside the paper towel as the head then gathered the towel under the head and secured it with a little rubber band. She drew on the faces and then we fastened a ribbon on the rubber band and hung them on the tree, They look really cute and it literally took us 20 minutes to make 12 ghosts and hang them up. Fun and east and she looks out the window all the time just to see her ghosts. :)