Outside Halloween Decorations?

We've made ghosts. You take small white trash bags, wad up another trashbags or grocery store bags and put in the trash bags at the bottom. Turn them upside down so that is at the top (to form the head), twist under the head and tie off (twist tie or string). That makes the skirt. Put a small wire or twist tie up through the seam where the head is to hang from trees or shrubs or the front porch.

I don't know if you're handy with a sewing machine or not, but my mom made an enormous black spider for her front porch (the top legs touched the porch roof and the bottom legs hung down almost to the brick railing). The legs were wire hangers bent into the appropriate shape and covered with pipe insulation which was then inserted into sleeves of black velvety material. The body and head were separate, made of the same material and stuffed with packing peanuts. The eyes were made out of a metallic red material wrapped around empty apple sauce cups. The whole thing could be disassembled and un-stuffed for easy storage. It looks amazing, since it appears that it could climb to the top of the house in just a few steps!

I found a jack-o-lantern face in the $1 section at Target, it's been on the front door for a week. We also have spider web lights to hang on the front of the house. We've talked about putting lights on the huge cactus we have but haven't decided. Any of the cute signs you can find at Michael's are good, too.

been doing this for years! We put pumpkins & gourds all over the landscaping, in the window box, & on the porch. We only carve 1-2...so that we can use the decor thru Thanksgiving. Oh, & we always put cornstalks around our porch posts...& I usually add some bows & fall flowers/etc on them.

We put a bale of straw in the garden by the front door. & we use all of our old costumes, masks, & supplies to create a vignette of monsters, weirdos, etc. A few pumpkins, a few spooky props, & some Halloween lights all add to the effect! If we have enough supplies, then we also scatter some of the creatures thruout the rest of the landscaping.

15-20 years ago, we created some tombstones out of plywood & heavy stakes. Simple paint job to create a "stone" effect & black paint for the lettering. Some are silly, some are freaky, some are rated "MA" only....& they all get laughs from the parents. I put these in our front circle garden with mason jars/votive candles. Always looks good!

I have a heavy-duty spider web (wire-framed) with a giant stuffed spider. I hang this from the front porch ceiling. & Year after year, there's always some kind of antique furniture on my porch....& we always set-up a vignette of creatures, pumpkins, etc using the furniture.

On Halloween, we use a lot of mason jars/votives. We try to run spooky music (outside).....& sometimes my son & his friends hang out in the landscaping & pop out & freak people. They're very careful not to scare the little ones, tho'!

Thanks for asking...good question! & here's the scary part...this is just a small part of our decorating. We've been throwing Halloween parties for 20 years now! Now that my younger son is 15.....I think we're coming to an end. This year he wants to do a bonfire/ghost war....& that's it. BooHoo!

We LOVE to decorate for Halloween. Our whole front porch is decked out. We use the colored spider webbing along with halloween lights entangled thru the webbing. We also have a variety of sized spiders we attach to the webbing too. We also have those baggies you fill with leaves or newspapers (the small baggies) that look like ghosts and hang them from our tree. We usually have at least 10 pumpkins we carve and decorate along with 3 or 4 big plastic ones. We also have our concrete goose that gets to have a Halloween Costume. We hav a couple of graveyard stones that sit out in the yard and my front door has a witches behind that looks like she smashed into a our front door. I used to have one for the yard too but a wind storm destroyed her a couple of years back. We also pull out of light bulbs from our outside lights and put in red and black light. We decorate Oct 1 and take down 1 week after Halloween.

LOVE IT!

Love the spider idea, though if you're not handy with sewing, you might be able to use garbage bags for the head and body (we do that at school). We put out several "flaming" pumpkins (carvable foam pumpkins that have a lightbulb inside), a cauldron and fog machine. We also hang some witched in our front picture window, have some garden gargoyles lying about and a few tombstones (gargoyles and tombstones were of Target/Meijer/WalMart origin, not very expensive).

I would love to see pictures!!