Free/Cheap Halloween Decorations

Halloween Parties are alot of WORK. A LOT OF WORK. (Yes, I use "a lot" instead of "much" - grammer police, come get me!) But they don't have to cost a fortune. Most of the decorations you can come up with for Halloween can be homemade. You will have to weigh the value of you own time, of course, but in this economy, it doesn't make sense to pay a ton for things you will only use one weekend a year. And the thing about Halloween parties is that if you have another party next year, you don't want to bore your guests with all the same decorations two years in a row. There's nothing scary about seeing the same old ghoul year after year!
This year I made our bathroom into a BATroom. (Hahaha, chortle at the cleverness!) Superfluous number of guano jokes aside, it turned out great. The cost of decor for the entire room was $1.15. We were lucky enough to borrow the bat-shaped lights to place around the mirror, but any old Christmas lights would have been sufficient to set the scene. The idea was that bright, overhead lights wouldn't looked very bat-cave-like. If you have a strobe light, it looks cool flashing behind the shower curtain. Unplug before showering.
In the picture above you can see various black bats. I purchased one piece of black poster board for $1.15. Found a template on the interwebs for a creepy bat (try a Google Image search for "bat template" or "bat clip art".) Traced and cut out fifteen bats from the poster board. (Your hand will hurt if you cut those all out by yourself. Take frequent beer breaks or get a significant other to help you. You may actually have to bribe the significant other with beer to get them to help. Please note that the quality of cut out bats will decrease after three beers, so moderation is the key.) Hang up the bats around the room. Tape some, hang some from string for a more "flappy" look.
I also thought, if I were a bat, what would I have in my cave? The answer was a framed picture of my best friend - in a bat's case, the Count from Sesame Street - and a picture of the coolest car ever - the batmobile. Again Google Image search for the pictures, then printed them to the size I needed. I already had the frames, just replaced the pictures (Sorry, picure of Grandma, you can return after Halloween.)
So, put your mind to it and you can come up with creative Halloween decorations without the scary pricetag.

Here's a link to another of my posts with a DIY Halloween project.