One Hour Decor – Halloween

Halloween this year was very special to us – it was the first year we’ve ever run out of candy!!!

Last year, we closed on the house at the beginning of October (the first morning in our new home was actually my birthday!) and we used the holiday as a way for our new neighbors to meet us. The week prior we had sent out an “About Us” letter to all the houses surrounding ours. We then purposefully sat outside that evening with all of our lights blazing and ended up meeting A LOT of them.

Being unabashedly introverts, it was something neither my husband nor I had ever done before and didn’t really want to do, but I was ready for a change. Plus, being new to the state, I wanted to make some friends and thought “I was friends with all the kids in my neighborhood growing up, maybe it works that way with adults too!”

Turns out, it does! We live in a mixed-generation (think: grandparents or new parents) neighborhood and as luck would have it, every single one of the houses that touch ours are owned by those in the grandparent generation. All are absolutely wonderful and while I am proud to call them friends, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind… Needless to say, we did not go through all of our candy last year.

This year, we kind of procrastinated until the day-of to do our holiday decorating. Which is a shame, because I think Halloween may be my favorite holiday (candy leftovers!!!). We DID, however, use this really awesome feature on a new social networking site and told all of our neighbors that we were handing out candy. The site is called Nextdoor and it is a free and private network just for your neighborhood so you can stay in the loop. The town has only been using it for about a year and so far, I am satisfied with the features and security.

So here is what you need to do a 1-hour decorating job for your house’s yard next Halloween:

1 bag of Fake Spider Webbing
1 Bag ‘o Bones (aka fake plastic skeleton parts)
1-3 Tombstones (plastic – not styrofoam!)
2-5 pumpkins, varying colors or sizes

I bought all this stuff in 2012 and it ran me about $30. The only thing I caution you about is to buy the plastic -not the styrofoam- tombstones as the styrofoam ones I first purchased lost their water-based paint after their first gentle and (gloomy!) rain shower.

Step One:

Husbands (or us hip independent types) will love this step. Do. Not. Rake. Your. Leaves. The abandon-ness makes it appear gloomy and spooky!

Step Two:

Pick one area for your cemetery. Scatter the bones, reserving the skull and one hand.

Step Three:

Place the tombstones among your bones. Stagger them – no lines! And, if they don’t stay perfectly upright, well, that just adds to the abandoned atmosphere!

Step Four:

String your spider webs! Using a small handful at a time, place your webbing by snagging it, then dragging it and snagging once more. Then, grab a small bit of the strands in the middle and gently pull and snag that so your spiderweb has three points. Do this a couple of times and spread out their locations. Use it on your doorway or porch too to lend even more ‘abandoned house’ vibes.

Voice of Experience Here. 1) Do not take all of your webbing out of the bag. It will get all sorts of leaves and stuff in it that will make it more difficult (read: takes longer) to install. 2) Be sure to read your packaging – mine wasn’t safe to have touching a heat/light source. Oops. At least I caught it before our leaves went up… 3) Less is more – we only did one tree, one side of lamp post, and the lower part of our doorway (a deliberate decision after having partially melted the part by the outdoor light last year).

Step Five:

Place your reserved skull bone fairly prominent among the headstones. I like to put mine right by out lamp post so it’s at car seat (sitting) or adult height (standing). Then take your hand bone and put it in front of a tombstone, but facing upright, so it looks like the hand is coming out of the grave. I’m going to go all “Bones” on you for a minute and remind you that it will look more authentic if you notice what hand it is (left or right) and place on the correlating side of the grave.

Step Six:

Pile your pumpkins up by the front door (or whatever doors your trick-or-treaters will use). The great thing about not carving your pumpkins is that they will last through this holiday, into Thanksgiving, and become yet another element of your overall decor – that you only have to purchase once. Why, I might even paint ours with ‘snow’ and silver glitter for winter if they last. Talk about following our motto (think smarter, not harder)!

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