DIY HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

My kids love Halloween and really enjoy helping me to decorate our home. We often decide on a theme together, dress up as a family, and decorate our home according to the theme which is often dictated by one of my kids’ birthdays as we celebrate two in October. However this year, my kids decided against coordinating, so we turned our home into a not so spooky haunted house with a graveyard. Here is how we did it using minimal supplies, time, and budget. Hoping these ideas can help you to add some fun to your home as well!

We started off with five pieces of scrap wood that were roughly four feet tall and two feet wide. I made a template of some simple gravestones and projected the images onto them. The template can be downloaded here if it is helpful.

Two gravestones print per page. My kids painted them with gray acrylic paint and then my dad cut them out with his jigsaw.

My daughter then used a Sharpie to further define the lettering on the gravestones.

My kids added some flowers and spooky hands from the Dollar Tree.

The flowers can just be poked right into the ground.

We added plastic skulls from the Dollar Tree.

More hands and spiders helped to complete the space.

The graves need to be attached to wooden stakes that can be pushed or hammered into the ground. Otherwise they will fall in the wind.

I made some large silhouettes in our windows. They are made by projecting images onto black poster board, taping them to the window with scotch tape, then covering everything up with white tissue paper.

There are a few tips and tricks to this. Before projecting my images onto the poster board, I always take a piece of poster board to the window and sort of measure how many pieces it would take to cover the window. That way I know how large to make my projection. You can either freehand what you have in mind or find clipart from a google search. I usually start with clipart but modify the shape so that the figure fits proportionally to the window. When taping, try to secure the tape onto lines that are already in your window. Make sure the side of the poster board with the price tag is facing in not out as I have messed that part up in the past as well. Before covering your silhouette up with white tissue paper, take a look outside to see if everything looks right.

I had to get on a very tall ladder to put Frankenstein up.

Here is what Frankenstein looks like from the outside at night. My husband still needs to help me to finish taping up the white tissue paper on top as I wasn’t able to reach it even with the ladder.

Our total cost for all the decorations including the inflatables was sixty dollars. I used 10 pieces of black poster board ($12.50) and two packages of white tissue paper ($2.50) to create the sillhouettes. The scrap wood for the gravestones were free from my handy dad and we spent roughly five dollars on gray paint. The inflatables were totally my kids’ ideas. They found the skeleton at the Dollar Tree for five dollars and the Halloween Hello Kitty at Walmart for 35 dollars. As my youngest will soon be celebrating her birthday in Halloween Hello Kitty style, I acquiesced.

My kids painted rocks to look like ghosts to further decorate our outdoor space.

They also created some candy corn suncatchers to add more color to our windows in the daytime.

This template is best printed out onto white cardstock or used as a template to trace onto black poster board. You can either use clear packing tape or contact paper to adhere tissue paper squares in white, orange, and yellow. Finally trim the edges when complete.

You may also be interested in:

DIY Thanksgiving Decorations

DIY Christmas Decorations

Free Halloween Printables for Kids

Zombies Math and Crafts

I create more activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.

If you use these printables or ideas in your home or classroom, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.

Hope this post can be helpful to you as you decorate your home for Halloween!