15 Cheap Outdoor Halloween Decorating Ideas
One of the greatest joys of Halloween is the ability to use your creativity and decorate the outside of your home. Whether you like to create a festive, fall atmosphere or a spooky graveyard, outdoor decorating is a blast. However, just as Halloween costumes and candy get expensive, decorations can get expensive as well. The following are 15 cheap ideas you can use to decorate your home for Halloween without breaking the bank.
1 The Cemetery
Cemeteries are commonplace when it comes to decorating the yard for Halloween. Rather than waste money on foam or plastic gravestones at your local retailer, just create your own from a few cardboard boxes. Cut out the shapes you want in your graveyard. Add variety by creating square, oval, and cross-shaped headstones. Paint them grey or black. Once it dries, you can add personalized sayings (for example, RIP). Finish them off by gluing wooden or plastic stakes on the back, and you’re all set.
If you don’t feel like turning your entire yard into a creepy cemetery, consider making one little grave. Try blending a little of white paint onto the tombstone’s edges, or glue on some artificial moss that you can find at any craft store. This way, you will make your Halloween grave look more authentic, creepy and aged.
2 Front Porch Guards
Scarecrows are synonymous with farms and fields. They are also a staple of front porches everywhere during Halloween. You can easily create a scarecrow on the cheap. Buy some pillow stuffing or use leaves from the yard, and stuff them into some of your old clothes around the house. Plop your new scarecrow in a lawn chair on the front step and you’ve got the perfect guard at the front door to greet trick-or-treaters. Create a few scarecrows to draw more attention to your house. Even though it’s a bit messy decoration, especially if you use straw instead of leaves, but who cares about the mess? Halloween is all about fun, not order.
3 Reusable Pumpkins
Rather than spending money each year on new pumpkins to use as Jack-o-Lanterns, consider buying artificial pumpkins from a local craft or hobby store. With an Exacto knife and some creativity, you can carve a pumpkin that can be used year after year to frighten visitors or just provide some spooky lighting on your doorstep. Artificial pumpkins don’t look like fresh ones, but they last longer (much longer) and you don’t have to worry about the smell of a pumpkin rotting in your yard. Splurge once and use for many years to come.
4 Coffins
If you consider yourself a handyman and have some basic tools around, you can create your own coffin to serve a variety of uses in your yard. With as a few as seven 4×4 boards, a hammer, saw, and nails, you can build a basic coffin to display in your Halloween décor. When it’s finished, you can use the coffin as a cooler for beverages during a party or hide inside of it to periodically scare the older trick-or-treaters that visit your home. Again, you can glue on some artificial moss to make those coffins look disgustingly beautiful. Experimenting with colors is also a great idea.
Read also – 10 Reasons to Celebrate Halloween Abroad
5 Frightening Spiders
Spiders are scary enough on the average day. There are so many people in the world who are afraid of spiders that a movie was made specifically about that fear. Spiders and spider webs are common displays during Halloween. If you have black trash bags and plenty of stuffing material, you can make your own frightening spider. Stuff a bag with newspaper, leaves, or packing materials, and tie it closed to create the body.
With eight more bags, you can fill the side of each bag and wrap them up to look like legs. Glue them to the body and you’ve got a spider. Need eyes? Glue the bottom of Styrofoam or plastic cups to the body for creepy eyes. Make your own Halloween spider webs using some wads of the cotton balls and white or gray threads. Be they big or small, spider webs with spiders will make your guests feel frightened once they reach your front door.
6 Ghostly Walkways
Start saving your one-gallon jugs in the weeks leading up to Halloween. With a black Sharpie and some candles, you can use these white jugs to create a ghostly walkway from the street to your door. Draw designs on each carton, cut out a whole in the bottom to insert candles, and line them along your sidewalk to create a spooky path to the door. If you don’t have candles or you want to make your ghostly walkway a bit safer, opt for white or yellow Christmas lights. You won’t have to worry about burning candles and will save some cash at the same time.
7 Specimen Jars
All you need for this decoration is mason jars and toys from around the house. Wash and dry out the jars, before adding some clean water to them. Go around the house in search of old children’s toys. Pop off the heads and hands to create specimens to place in the jar. Add some food coloring, and you’ve got all you need to startle guests as they arrive at your door. If you don’t have kids and toys at home, a thrift shop is waiting for you. Or you can ask your friends who have children. The head off an old doll may be an ideal option.
8 Flying Bats
This might be the easiest Halloween decorating idea you’ll find but still it takes some time and effort to create your own flying bats. You’ll need some black felt (available at your local hobby store), tape, and string. Cut out your bat figures, tape (or glue) the string to their backs, and then hang them around your front porch or from the trees in your yard. While black is a typical color for flying bats, you can make some colorful figures to make your house stand out from the rest.
Read also – 9 Fun Halloween Activities for the Whole Family
9 Corpses
Creating a dismembered body parts or whole corpses is easy. Gather up old clothes from around your house and stuff them with leaves. If you’ve built a coffin (as discussed earlier) you can place the corpse in the coffin. With a little red paint for blood and a sock, you can place dismembered feet by the tombstones in your graveyard. In fact, you can freely experiment with the corpses because they can be placed anywhere around the yard or the garden so that your guests or random visitors will catch themselves on a corpse. Make your guests scream with fear and delight this holiday season.
10 Cobwebs
Draping your front step or porch in cobwebs can make for a spooky welcoming for your party guests and trick-or-treaters. All you need for cobwebs is pillow stuffing from your local hobby store. Simply pull out a chunk of stuffing and spread it thin across a window sill, along the frame of your door, or use hooks to help suspend it from the ceiling. This is a creative way to decorate your home and yard from top to bottom without paying heaps for Halloween decorations that are rather expensive in October.
11 Merry Ghost
Who said ghosts are angry, creepy and cold? Ghosts can be friendly and merry too. It all depends on you. If you are a positive person, your ghost can also be positive. All you need to have to create your own merry ghosts is your creativity and some unnecessary stuff you keep in your attic. Try making a few merry ghosts that will welcome your neighbors and guests on Halloween.
12. Scary, Scarier and the Scariest
Spend a day having fun and picking your future outdoor decorations at the nearest pumpkin patch. Carve as many pumpkins as you can and place them in the garden or porch to wow your guests. While these pumpkins don’t look creepy during the day, they will definitely frighten everyone at night. Exactly what you need on Halloween!
13 Black and White Creativity
Perhaps every other house in your neighborhood has orange and green pumpkins. Instead of following the crowd, make your home uniquely festive. Paint your pumpkins black and white and add some pictures, if you have drawing skills, of course. Stop wasting money buying Halloween decorations, you can make much better ones. Give it a try!
14 Positive Farmer
If a merry ghost isn’t your thing, a positive farmer is your best option. Straw, pumpkins and DIY farmer will make your house or garden a perfect place to take selfies – especially if you live in a big city where people don’t know what farming is and how it looks like. This decoration is a bit messy but I hope it won’t prevent you from making your positive farmer.
15 Straw cake
Despite its creepiness, Halloween is a happy holiday. Decorate your garden with a straw cake to spread Halloween spirit. The bigger cake, the better. Use your creativity to decorate your straw cake so that eveyone could say, “Wow, how did you make it?” Straw cake doesn’t take much time to make it, unlike other Halloween ideas I already mentioned.
Read also – 10 Creative Halloween Party Ideas
There is no need to break the bank to create a spooky and downright enjoyable outdoor decoration scheme. If you look around the house and visit your local craft store, you can create all that atmosphere without spending hundreds of dollars in the process. Are you going to decorate your house and yard this Halloween?
