More Scary Halloween Tricks and Treats

Make Goblins and Ghosties Feel Right at Home

Sep 21, 2009 Stefanie Gabrych Fraser

For most kids, the main goal at Halloween was to whip around as many houses as possible and stuff their pillow cases to bursting.

Nowadays, parents are reluctant to send their kids out trick or treating and so the tradition for some has been to celebrate indoors. Here are a few ideas to make it a spook-tacular event.

Fast and Easy Decorations

  • Take a trio of inexpensive orange and black feather boas and turn these into a pretty (and instant) wreath for the front door by threading the boas around a wire coat hanger pulled into a circle shape.
  • Wrap a spare black or orange boa around a string of holiday lights and drape over your fireplace, inserting a few small white pumpkins for added decoration.
  • Paint cheap clear glass chalices (from the dollar store or a charity shop) black and pop in black candles. A single row of these on your dining table makes a perfectly eerie setting for a midnight feed.
  • Perch a few faux black crows in unexpected places to give guests a little fright or get the kids to make a few dozen spiders to hide around the house to scare away any ghostly apparitions. To make the spiders, twist three pip-cleaners for the legs, glue a black pompom in the middle and then add some googly eyes. No time to make spiders? Head for your local dollar store for plastic ones.
  • Bare tree branches provide the perfect ghostly perch for small jack-o'-lanterns or small lanterns fitted with orange votives. Make sure that the branches are wedged into a flowerpot or pail with weights such as rocks and that they are sturdy enough to hold the weight of the decorations.

More Food and Fun

  • It wouldn’t be Halloween without a helping of candy and other sweet treats. Since we only get a few kids out on Halloween these days, it’s easy to make up a few loot bags full of treats to pass out. Make your own loot bags from cereal and other cardboard food boxes and cover with magazine pages that have a Halloween theme. Use pipe cleaners for handles.
  • If you’re holding a party for Halloween, create different destinations or stations for your ghoulish guests—for appetizers, drinks, and dessert. Fill hollowed out pumpkins with ice to hold beverages or fill with candy treats for the kids. If that’s too much trouble, use pails decorated with cut-outs of witches, bats, and black cats instead.
  • Transform balloon glasses into tiny jack-o’-lanterns with cut out ‘eyes’ made from black electrical tape and adding carrot or orange juice spiked with vodka. For the kids, glue the ‘eyes’ to clear beverage glasses and fill with milk. Tell them that it’s a witch’s brew.

Scary Sights and Spooky Sounds

  • Put on a scary movie and then hide under a blanket on the sofa after renting out some scary DVDs from the video shop!
  • Send shivers down family members’ spines with a special Halloween play list. Visit the iTunes music store at Apple.com for fun and scary music mixes to download onto CDs. Why not copy a few CDs to hand out as treats?

Last word of advice: Never, ever leave lighted candles unattended and turn off any decorative lights when you leave the room.

Create more fun this Halloween with these fun and frugal Halloween decor ideas and_projects.

The copyright of the article More Scary Halloween Tricks and Treats in Entertaining is owned by Stefanie Gabrych Fraser. Permission to republish More Scary Halloween Tricks and Treats in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
Plastic pompom pumpkins, Stefanie Gabrych Fraser Plastic pompom pumpkins
   
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