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. 

Scary Blood-Spatter Halloween Decoration

Looking for a NEW cheap and terrifying Decorating Idea for your Halloween Party? 

I am a huge fan of decorating for Halloween.  I am also a huge fan of NOT spending a ton of money.  This idea combines those two goals into one easy and fun DIY project.  Enjoy!

BLOODY TARPS

Someone (Dexter?  Freddy?) committed a horrible bloody murder in your basement, hallway, or garage!!! Basically these are red paint splattered lightweight plastic sheets.  This decorating idea has BIG impact. The tarps can instantly transform your charming country living room into a scary warehouse murder scene. Sweet! The other awesome thing is that you can hang the tarps in front of stuff to hide it.  For example, if you want to keep people out of one side of your basement (maybe so they don’t see all the junk you store down there), a tarp can be hung across the middle of the room, blocking your dirty secrets (and Christmas decorations) from sight.                         

Total cost: about $11.

Materials needed:

1 Quart of Blood Red Paint – go to your local hardware store and have them mix up the bloodiest red you can find.

3 large clear plastic painters’ tarps.  Also available in the paint aisle.  Get the cheapest quality you can find.  You don’t want these things to be heavy, or they will be difficult to hang. 

Paintbrush

A rubber glove – I just used an old one we had under the sink. Bonus!

Duct tape

How To

Hang up one tarp outside, or in your garage, or any appropriate painting area - well-ventilated with a lot of space.  (I held up my plastic tarp by tucking the top edge under heavy stuff on a high shelf, but you could also use duct tape.).  You want the tarp to be hung up while painted, and not flat on the ground, because you really want those awesome bloody drips to form.  Place one of the other tarps flat on the ground underneath the hung tarp.  You don’t want the ground to be covered in paint. 

Dip the paint brush in the red paint and flick red paint onto the hung tarp, creating a blood splatter effect.  Start in the middle of the tarp.  (If you get too close to the edge, the paint might spatter off the sides, getting your yard or garage paint-splattered.)  Randomly spatter paint and brush paint in a slashing motion all over the tarp.  You can also write “Help” or “Beware” or “Die” in messy brushstrokes. 

When it looks sufficiently bloodied, put on the rubber glove and dip your hand into the paint.  Make a few bloody handprints.  I liked the effect of dragging my hand across the tarp.  Like the victim was trying to escape or something.  (I like to think I am theatrical and not a sick, sick person.) 

After the paint drips down the tarp to your liking, lay it flat to dry.  Takes a few hours to dry.

Repeat the process for the other two tarps.  (One tarp could be enough, depending on your party needs, but a quart is enough paint to do three tarps, and since the tarps cost about $0.79 apiece, why not do more?  Go big or go home.)

Now it’s time to decorate your party space!  The plastic tarps I used were so light that I could hang them by duct tape, or in places, by tucking the tarp under something heavy on a high shelf, or by poking a preexisting nail through the plastic. 

When the party is over, fold the tarp gently, paint-side-in.  Note that a bit of the paint may chip off in places, so when you open it next year, maybe open it outside first so you don’t get red paint chips in the house.

Caution - bloody tarps may cause guests to pretend to stab each other.

 Check my post at this link for another cheap Halloween Decorating idea.

Check my post at this link for an invitation to go with the whole "Blood Spatter" theme.

Check my post at this link for a "how-to" on creating Halloween Party Atmosphere.

Creating Halloween Party Atmosphere

Have you ever been to a party where everyone is a little too polite and not really having fun? Odds are that the atmosphere for the party wasn't quite right. I mean, who wants to dance when the lighting is so bright and florescent that you don't know if you are at a party or visiting the dentist?
More than most any other type of party, Halloween especially needs a great mood to be set. People are dressed in ridiculous costumes, ready to let their inhibitions go, and as a host or hostess, you need to encourage the wild side of your guests.

Setting the Halloween mood requires three things - lighting, decorations, and sound.

LIGHTING:
This is the most important element of your Halloween scene-setting. No one wants bright lighting at a Halloween Party. Let me repeat: NO ONE WANTS BRIGHT LIGHTING AT A HALLOWEEN PARTY. So, how do you create a spooky mood while still ensuring that your guests can see their way to the food table?

• Gels - Theatrical gels can be found on Ebay from various vendors. They are pieces of thin, colored plastic that don't melt even when touching hot electric lights. I would recommend getting a few green ones and a few red ones and putting them over any light bulbs in your home. They will still let enough light through, but will cast a dramatic colored light in the party rooms. Maybe do green if you are recreating a bat cave, or use red for a freaky glow in the kitchen. Red light is actually really disturbing and makes people think about danger (or in Amsterdam, prostitutes), so it's perfect for Halloween.
• Candles - Be careful, because drunk guests + fire is not always the best equation. But candles placed in a low-traffic area create an unparalled ambience. If those candles are placed inside a creepy jack o' lantern, even better!
• Colored lightbulbs - These are great because they are easy to find in any home improvement store. Colored bulbs come in CFL now, which are much better because they don't get so deadly hot to the touch, use less energy, and especially the black lights create a brighter effect.
• Turn off the overhead lights - Even if you don't want crazy colored lighting at your party, turning on some lamps instead of the super bright overhead lights will create a cozier atmosphere.

Warnings - Don't put colored cloth over a hot light and don't try to paint lightbulbs. It could start a fire, and then your party would suck. Also, make sure there is sufficient lighting on stairways for safety.
DECORATIONS - You can make fun decorations for free or at least buy them pretty inexpensively. I'll do a post later this week on homemade deocrations. Decorations are a must at Halloween! Seriously, why even throw a Halloween party if you don't want to make your house spooky?
I like to do each room as a different theme. For example - arachnid living room, batroom or bloody Psycho scene in the bathroom, Zombie-attack food room, skeletons in the closet, kitchen = witch's potion room. Some people who throw Halloween parties have a whole house theme that is different every year. You can get great ideas at the Halloween Forum website. Your guests will be expecting alot from the decorations if they are invited to a Halloween party at your place - so don't disappoint!
There are a couple things to keep in mind when decorating your place for Halloween:

1. What age guests are you expecting? There are many levels of Halloween decor from "Autumn Festive" to "Terror Town". If this is a party for five year olds, let's stay on the tame end of the spectrum. No skeletons in electric chairs for the young 'uns, okay? However, if you have all ages, you might choose to make the basement or backyard really terrifying for the older guests, and keep other areas just a little spooky.
2. How overboard do you want to go with this? You can choose a couple rooms to decorate, and leave the rest normal. Saves time and money, and keeps guests out of the boring rooms (fewer rooms to clean later - bonus!) And, if your party this year rocks, people will want you to throw a party next year, so don't blow all your great ideas at once.
3. BORROW decorations from other people. Why buy or make a million things that you will just have to store in your garage? So many people have had a big party in the past, and would be happy to let you borrow their stuff. Ask around! (Don't ask people that you don't plan to invite - that's rude! "Dude, can I borrow your homemade coffin for my awesome party? But you can't come. I think it's creepy that you have a coffin and I don't want my friends to know that I know you.")

SOUND: Okay, so there are sound effects, Halloween theme music (think "Thriller" or "Devil Went Down to Georgia"), and regular party music. Sound effects are cool to put on the front porch or in your haunted basement, but nobody wants to stand around the punch bowl for three hours listening to nothing but ghost moans and witch cackling. Ummm...no. Just no. Halloween theme music is a good idea. Everyone REALLY, REALLY wants to hear Thriller on Halloween. But they only want to hear it once. If you have 15 songs on a Halloween mix tape, you can't just put it on repeat for the whole night. People will leave your party after the third time through. I'd suggest playing your mix once at the beginning of the party, and once at the tail end of the party, with regular party music in between. Or even better, create a three hour mix with regular songs (lemme put in a request for some 80's music!) and Halloween songs mixed together.
Have any more ideas about creating Halloween atmosphere? Post them in the comments!

Halloween Invitations

I'm not knocking Evite - it's convenient! cute graphics! I have a head count! - but there is something about Evite that feels a little forced. Sometimes when a friend sends me an Evite, I'll sit for ten minutes trying to think of an unoffensive excuse to put next to my name in the "Not attending" column (when the real reason is that I can see that your stupid co-worker Travis just RSVPed and spending a night listening to him tell off-color jokes is my personal version of hell.)

Generally, if I'm taking the time and spending the money to have a legendary shin-dig, I want the invitation to reflect that. If it's something less legendary, like a backyard BYOB party, I'll buy some hot dogs and send an Evite. If you are planning a fancy, high-budget affair such as a wedding, there are whole books of etiquette about the invitations you'll need, and I'm not getting into all that now.

The next party I'm hosting is the best of all theme parties - HALLOWEEN!! We are expecting 45 people from multiple circles of friends. This is our second annual Halloween party and the pressure is on to make it even better than last year's event (which was SUPER FUN, especially considering that we were first-timers who didn't have many decorations yet!)

Invites needed to go out to 60 people or so. Personally, I would rather spend my party budget on better booze instead of stamps. So we did the ecological, economical thing and created a PDF invitation to email to our friends.

PROS to the E-MAILED PDF/JPEG:

• You can also print the PDF and hang it up at work, eliminating the awkward "co-worker party" email, or pass out a flyer to your neighbors.

• It's cooler and more memorable than just typing a few lines of text in an email or text message.


• The invitation will continued to be formatted that way you want, even if friends forward it to other people.


• Design will give the guests a clue about what to expect at the party.
  

Below are my invitations from this year's and last year's parties. They were both designed in Adobe Illustrator (with some Photoshop for good measure). You can also use a program like Microsoft Publisher to create similar effects. We found some inspiration by doing an Image search on Google.

Our party will be a Thriller!

We were in the middle of watching Season 1 of Dexter when we designed this one.