Decorating on a budget

Halloween is approaching fast and before you know it, kids will come a knocking. One of the many reasons I love Halloween is that kids of all ages still love to play dress up for that one time a year. I have a lot of people tell me they just don’t know what to do in terms of decorating for Halloween (other than the traditional pumpkins and store bought webs).

I thought I would share some ideas of how you can make the most out of your front entrance that will have a huge impact that won’t break your bank.

First pick a theme and follow through. 

If you choose clowns for example, pick one great prop and build around it. This year Spirit Halloween has a great creepy clown thats animated and for the price is a great prop. Be sure to place it by where the kids have to walk by and activate it. 

All the staging throughout the rest of your front should stay within that Circus/Freak show Genre. 

There is plenty of stuff related to clowns that you can use; balloons, popcorn, posable skeletons dressed in clown attire, print up vintage circus posters from posters.com and frame them in inexpensive poster frames and command strip them on your exterior windows. Mesh ribboning from Joanne’s or Michael’s in bright colors to wrap tree trunks or zip tie them every 12 inches and place around your front door; clown shoes coming out under some bushes. The key is to splurge on one good animated prop and build around it with less expensive items. I always like to have milk crates or small TV trays I can dress with fabric and put next to a prop to load up with smaller items on top of.

Cheese cloth is always my go to fabric. You can order it in bulk by the box and dye it whatever color fits your theme – then shred and cut holes in it to give it a really tattered look. Nothing to do with Halloween needs to look clean and perfect – thats why the possibilities are endless when it comes to decorating.

Here are a few props I loved for the price this year.

The Forgotten Toys from Party city. This was exclusive to them this year and its fantastic. The sound is super creepy and the toys rise up really slow $114

Spirit Halloween has the 6ft twitching clown for $199

That does more of a creepy side to side thing than twitching,  but the music and laughing is really on point and doesn’t sound cheesy. 

Man’s Possessed friend is a great jump scare ‘Cujo’ inspired dog that pops out of his doghouse when you walk by and you don’t see it coming. $159

Both these places have coupons for 25% off when you buy online and these props have a good bang for your buck in terms of overall effectiveness. 

I will leave you with one final thought… most Halloween props and decor go on sale mid October to make room for Christmas, so I always like to scoop up the deals on ‘clearance anything’ – even the smaller stuff. You never know what you may need and you can always use them for a BOO bag if your neighborhood tends to do that.