How to decorate your home for Halloween

Three wicked window ideas

Halloween window decorations are a fang-tastic way of letting trick or treaters know you’re not frightened of having some fun during spooky season.

1. Use water-based paint to splatter a spooky message on your windows, perhaps a simple “keep out” and red handprints or if you’re more artistic, a Halloween scene.
2. Create silhouettes of witches, ghosts, bats or skulls using black craft paper and stick them to your windows. The light from inside your home will then cast eerie shadows of your silhouettes.
3. Cut up an old white bedsheet so that it looks like a ghost and hang it in your window, with UV lights inside to give it an eerie glow.

Six scarily simple Halloween decorations

If you’re screaming out for Halloween decoration ideas we have some simple suggestions.

1. Ghostly goings on – Collect the leaves that have fallen from the trees and paint them white. Once they’re dry you can draw eyes on your ghosts. These could be used as table decorations or threaded through string to create a ghoulish garland.
2. Mummy hand – inflate a rubber glove as if it was a balloon and tie to hold, then wrap with a bandage or white toilet roll to create the effect of a mummy’s hand.
3. Mini haunted houses – paint a bird box black and stretch out cottonwool to wrap around it so that it looks like cobwebs.
4. An eerie glow – switch up your light bulbs, replacing your regular ones for red, green or orange lights.
5. Bat branches – prune some small tree branches, paint them black and place in a vase or jar; tie short lengths of black ribbon to the branches as bats; use white puffy paint to add eyes or add stick on eyes.
6. Witch’s broomstick – cut strips into a piece of brown paper, leaving a couple of centimetres at the end, attach double-sided tape to the edge you’ve left uncut and then wrap around a glow stick.

Perfect pumpkin art

Traditionally Jack o-’lanterns were carved from turnips in a bid to ward off evil spirits, but in modern times pumpkins have become synonymous with Halloween. We’ve put together fiendish five-step guide to pumpkin carving:

1. Cut the bottom of your pumpkin rather than the top as this will help it keep its shape.
2. Scoop out the seeds and flesh, thin out some of the pumpkin walls.
3. Draw your design on paper and use is a stencil when carving out your pumpkin art.
4. Shave some of your design to give added depth, rather than simply carving your pumpkin.
5. Carve a design on the back of your pumpkin too as this will create eerie shadows when it’s lit up with either a candle or battery-operated light.

Young children can still have fun decorating pumpkins without picking up a knife. Pumpkin painting or using stickers are a great option for little fingers.

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