Halloween Decorations, Recipes and Pumpkin Carving Ideas - Everything for a Special Halloween / Trick or Treat Evening
Here is a wonderful collection of Halloween decorations for you and your little horrors to make and enjoy for this coming festivities at Halloween.
..... looking for even more scary ideas? Then have a look at the Halloween ideas I've found on my Pinterest page
This is my favourite pumpkin design - what's yours?
For centuries Christians have celebrated the evening before special holy day, known as keeping a vigil, and the concept of Halloween comes from keeping that vigil the eve before All Hallows Day.
In Ireland and Scotland church-faring citizens congregated at evening ceremonies to offer prayers and blessings in the local churchyards where holy water was sprinkled on the graves as a blessing to ward off evil and as an opportunity to remember those family members that had passed on.
As with a lot of the Christian festivals and holy days these were preempted by Celtic festivals and in this particular instance it is believed that All Hallows was previously the Celtic celebratory feast of Samhain which marked the beginning of Winter.
Whatever the origins of this special time it is now a celebration for children of all ages and I never let it pass without marking it, I enjoy going to the shops and buying large buckets of sweets for the children that call at our house, but most of all I just can't wait to go to the allotment to select and harvest the pumpkins, squash.
For me nothing says Halloween like pumpkins, whether they are decorated, lit or just stacked in piles on your doorstep to welcome the trick or treaters. But there are so many other ideas, some simple, some a little more elaborate that will truly get you in the Halloween 'spirit'. I've gathered together a few of my favorites that will be happening at our house and hopefully you'll love them as much as we do, I love to get the kids involved in making these and it just increases the excitement and fun of the festivities.
Perfect Halloween Window Decor
Our windows from the outside
Window Monsters
What better way to decorate your home for Halloween than these wonderfully simple, easy to make Window Monsters - this is definitely one of my favorite ways to celebrate Halloween that I've seen and I can't wait to try it out on our house.
This is such a cheap and easy way to show off your house in all it's scary glory, all you need is some rolls of black paper and a pair of scissors, turn on your room lights and there you have it a whole house full of monsters.
We loved doing this, you can see ours in the photographs below, and can you see our little black bats hanging from the rose bush outside the window? We covered the rose bush with black bats and white ghosts - going to do this every year, love it!
How To Draw A Ghost
- How to draw a ghost
Let's get spooky! This tutorial will show you how to draw a basic sheet ghost. These instructions can be followed by artists of all levels.
In-house promoting here, a very talented hubber, Shawnte87, has produced a series of hubs on how to draw which my daughter and her friends find invaluable and are so proud of what they produce because of her help so here is the link to her hub How To Draw A Ghost.
Halloween Cupcakes
- Halloween Cupcakes - Cupcake Decorating Ideas
Looking for easy decorating ideas for your Halloween cupcakes? Learn how to decorate pumpkin, ghost, and cat cupcakes with these fun design ideas.
Skull Make-up
- How To Do Skeleton Makeup
Do your own skeleton or skull makeup for Halloween or any spooky occasion. Be the creepiest one at the party!
Batty Doorway
Isn't this fabulous??? We will be doing this perhaps outdoors, perhaps indoors but it's definitely going to happen!
- Batty Doorway and Other Home Halloween Designs
Related home design picture of halloween-themed decoration from onhomedesign.com -Interior Design | Home Design | Decorating Ideas | Furniture Colle
Boo-tiful Girlie Ghosts
- Girlie Ghosts Tutorial - 7 Layer Studio
Who says ghosts have to be all white? These little darlings are sporting designer looks with their scrapbook paper gowns....
Eat, Drink and Be Scary
This is a printable sign for your home - just click on it to open up and print copies for hanging.
Scary Eyes
- Eerie Outdoor Halloween Decorations
Decorate your front door, porch, sidewalk, and yard with Halloween designs that cast a spooky spell over the whole neighborhood.
Painted Jar Luminaries
Friendly Halloween Decor
Of course if you have little children around the house and don't want to frighten them but still want to join in I think that this is one of the happiest friendliest decorations with a Halloween theme that I've seen, I also think the luminaries featured above and the candles below are also very child-friendly, AND extremely easy to do and cost next to nothing.
Boo Candles
Wall Bats, Spiders and .... Boo!
Giant Spiderweb
I love this giant spiderweb which is great for corners of rooms or on top of mirrors but I also think it would be fabulous in a window, with the light shining through it would really show it to good effect, and the larger the spider the better it would be.
And below is a different version of spiderwebs but this time using black garbage bags, these would be great on a porch as they would wave around in the breeze and wouldn't disintegrate in the rain, I would also suggest making spiders out of the same plastic to hang from them.
Ghostly Plants
We took the paper ghost idea above and put little ghosts on one of our plants - it looked fab! Very easy, very quick and it was so effective we hung some from the climbing rose bush outside our front door too.
I just love this vase of flowers with lots of little creepy spiders tumbling around in them, very easy to do, get the kids to do this they'll love it and you can buy the plastic spiders very cheaply from Ebay.
Indoor Halloween Decorations by Martha Stewart
Ghostly Halloween Balloons
You can of course just buy Halloween themed balloons, but to add that extra effect indoors or out pop a glo stick inside each balloon before inflating them and you get a fabulous effect.
Black Cat Silhouettes and Other Clipart
The following groups of photographs are from Martha Stewart who really is queen of the holidays, you can find these and many other clipart images on her website at the link below but these are definitely some of my favourites.
- Black Cats, Rats and many other clipart silhouettes
Read Marthastewart's Black Cat Silhouettes article Also, browse thousands of other holiday clip-art, decorating, crafts, hand-made gifts and project ideas.
This colony of mice or rats is ideal for staircases and bookshelves and the more the merrier, or should I say the more the scarier?
Children will just love this non-scary table and decorations
Paper Mache Pumpkin Lights
Bat Lamp
This is incredibly easy, I used black cardboard and some blue tack, cut out bat shapes and stick them to the inside of the lamp and as you can see it was very successful - the kids can do this with ease and they will love getting involved, just make sure the lights haven't been switched on as the bulbs will be hot - make sure this is a treat and not a trick!
Halloween Invitations - Clip Art
Queasy Reisling and Murky Merlot
- Haunt the House for an Old-Fashioned Halloween Party
Turn back time and delight guests with spirited treats, decorations, and party favors with old-fashioned Halloween flair.
Spooky Bento Boxes
You must visit this website and have a look at the spooky Bento Boxes - I'm a major fan on these!
The fabulous little Bento Box (Japanese lunch box) featured above can be seen at a Goth website called "Stripy Tights and Dark Delights" just do a search for Bento for Goths and you will locate it easily.
Spooky Punch
- Make Creepy Halloween Punch with this Bone Chilling Recipe
I just adore these floating ice hands!
Halloween Mummy Cupcakes
Witches Hat Cookies
Hanging Bats and Ghosts
All you need for this activity which the kids will love, actually I adore them too, is a good pair of scissors and some thick black card for the bats and white card for the ghosts, although maybe here in the UK we would need to use plastic, especially since it's pouring with rain outside as I'm typing this, but basically black bats in various sizes are the order of the day and they are hung outside and inside your home. I have a sturdy climbing rose bush outside my front door which is just perfect for hanging these gorgeous little creatures from and they will bob and sway in the wind, I'm sure that both children and adults alike will adore how they look and I think it will be a great family activity on a rainy day such as today.
The easy way to do this is to draw a bat/ghost on a piece paper, keep amending it until you're happy with the shape you want (there are lots of free templates on the internet) and then trace it onto your card and cut out, I attached white thread to the ghosts with some sellotape and black thread onto the bats and voila you have yourself a very spooky and fun entrance to your home for Halloween.
Origami Halloween Crafts
- An Origami Halloween - Decoration Ideas
Great Halloween Decoration Ideas using simple paper crafts. Learn how to do Halloween Origami. Cheap, fun, and a great way to celebrate the Holiday!
Pumpkin Carving Ideas
Pumpkins from our Allotment
Traditional Irish Carved Turnip
I know that there is a preference for a perfectly round orange pumpkin but there are so many gorgeous pumpkins around in different colours and textures why not try a variety.
As you can see from the one in the photograph above we used the shape and two smaller pumpkins to make a very original looking pumpkin!
There are lots of ways to decorate pumpkins, if you want to turn them into pumpkin soup later on then you can use paint and sequins to make the most wonderful designs on the outside and so leaving the sweet flesh for eating in the days following the celebration.
Although turnips are more traditional in the UK you very seldom see them being used anymore, I do think that there is definitely something more scary about a carved turnip - to my mind they are things that nightmares are made of and therefore perhaps that is why we have switched over to the friendlier looking orange pumpkin.
3 EASY WAYS TO CARVE YOUR PUMPKINS
I don't know about you but for me Halloween isn't complete without a carved pumpkin and I like to do this on the morning of Halloween, that way I have a nice fresh looking pumpkin already to be put on the doorstep, porch or in the main window.
Now for those of you who have never done this I promise it is much easier than you think it is as long as you know how, and that I'm going to explain.
There are three ways of creating a candlelit pumpkin which I have used, the first one is incredibly, incredibly easy, the second is also easy and the last is the most time-consuming, they all start the same way:
- Using a sharp knife cut a lid into the top of your pumpkin, you will be putting the lid back on so do not discard it.
- Next, here comes the messy part, scrape out all the seeds and the loose threadlike debris. You can get special pumpkin kits for doing this but one of the most useful things I've found for scraping out the inside of the pumpkin is a 'pizza cutter' yes those little short handled (ideal for getting inside the pumpkin) round blades, I have one with a guard on it so that you can't get cut and I recommend that you only use one that has this, fake blood at this time of year is great, we don't want any actual injuries.
- There are lots of things you can do with pumpkin seeds so do not throw them out, instead go to Martha Stewart's fabulous website at the link below:
- What to Do with Pumpkin Seeds
View Martha Stewart's What to Do with Pumpkin Seeds collection.
And although this year I will probably attempt a number of these I will still always have to have a carved and candlelit pumpkin sitting in my front room window and by my doorstep to show the children of the neighbourhood that we are participating in this autumnal festival and that if they come and knock on our door we will welcome their shouts of "trick or treat" and there will be goodies to share.
1st Method:
Take an electric drill and drill holes in your pumpkin, it is as easy as that, I absolutely love doing this it's such fun. You can vary the size of the holes using different drill bits but there's nothing more than that tell you, and it looks beautiful. I love doing this it is truly good fun and stress relieving - power tools and food what can I tell you. If the holes that you make aren't as large as you would like them then what I do is I get a chopstick and push it into each hole and twist it around until the holes are as large as you want them, this also clears away any pumpkin that is blocking the holes.
We loved this idea, we chose to do a traditional scary face at the front and this was the view from inside the house to light our front room - very pretty!
2nd Method:
The next method involves using metal cookie cutters to make your designs, I particularly like the star shaped cutters in various sizes which look so beautiful in the window as they throw star-shaped lights on the ceiling and across the room. You can find the full description on how to do this at the link below:
- Carve Pumpkins with Cookie Cutters
How to carve Pumpkins with Cookie Cutters. Find a new use for cookie cutters and use them to carve pumpkins this Halloween.
Third Method:
Other than cooking it this is my favourite way to prepare a pumpkin, the only problem I ever encounter is deciding which design I'm going to use as there are so many to choose from.
- Using a small awl (this looks like a screwdriver that instead of having a Phillips-head or a slot head it comes to a point), so using the awl poke holes into the pumpkin to create your design. If you're not very good at drawing you can use a template picture and after sellotaping or blu tacking the picture to the pumpkin just make holes through the picture onto the pumpkin so that when you take it off you can see the outline of the design. There are lots of Halloween stencils on the internet that you can use for this.
- Once you have traced your design onto the pumpkin use a shorthand saw, you can also buy special pumpkin saw tools from a lot of the supermarkets, I bought a set about 5 years ago, it cost £2 and it's still going strong. Using the saw cut out the parts of the pumpkin that you want the light to shine through. It takes a little while but they do look fabulous and there are some wonderful stencils out there for you to try out. Of course you can just draw a scary face onto the pumpkin and cut that out too, I sometimes end up doing an intricate design on one side and a face on the other.
Pumpkin Carving Tools and Stencils:
You can purchase Pumpkin Carving Tool Kits online through Amazon, some come complete with your very own stencils. Of course there are many stencils available online see the main photograph at the top of this hub and if you're any good at free drawing then of course you can design your own pumpkin by first drawing on the pumpkin before carving it. Whatever you do enjoy it, make sure any naked flames are completely extinguished before you collapse into bed and above all have fun and watch out for those ghosties and ghoulies heading your way.
1st Prize for Martha Stewart's Beautiful Carved Pumpkin
For me this is definitely one of the most beautifully carved pumpkins I've seen and I will definitely have an attempt at this version, if I manage it successfully I will post a photo of it.
QUICK AND EASY INDOOR DECORATIONS
There are some wonderful ideas on the internet for decorations for instance how about these gorgeous little name cards for your dinner table?
- Pumpkin Place Cards for Dinner Parties
Pumpkin Place Cards for Dinner Parties and Recipes for a complete, traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Menu. Photographs included.
It really can be as simple as just heaping lots of little baby pumpkins or squashes into a bowl after tying them up with beautiful festive ribbons, and of course you can eat them after Halloween has ended.
One of my favourites just has to be this fabulous leafy centerpiece for your table pictured below - but all the 24 decorating ideas on the website I've linked below for you have to be among the best I've ever seen - I am loving those dotty pumpkins at suggestion number 6 - and if I had the time I would probably do them all and have the most fabulously 'pumpkin mad' house in the street and forever be known as the 'mad pumpkin lady' - would I care? Not in the slightest!
- 30 Pumpkin Decorating Projects | Midwest Living
Pumpkins add stylish, creative and fun touches to fall decorating. Try our techniques for creating pumpkins with personality!
No Carve Pumpkin Decorating
Easy, inexpensive, and last-minute ideas for decorating real or artificial pumpkins. Get inspiration for what to do with your pumpkin. All ideas don't require carving or gutting pumpkin.
COLLECTING AUTUMN LEAVES WITH THE FAMILY
This is another one of my family Halloween rituals, rituals what an appropriate word for this holiday isn't it? Anyway, I take the dogs and the kids and go for a walk in our local parkland or woods and collect bags of leaves, the more multi-coloured the better and of course anything else that takes our fancy at the time, the kids and dogs love nothing more than to run and drag their feet through piles of gathered leaves and my basset will bury herself in them and roll around. I use these leaves in a huge pile to put underneath my pumpkin sitting by my front door and inside in baskets underneath smaller piles of pumpkins, squashes and apples.
It's a great way of having fun with the kids and getting them away from the television and electronic games and you get beautiful decorations in the process.
Looking for more ideas, then have a look at one of my favourite hubber's, Nonrsmercy is a wonderful blogger with some fabulous ideas for Halloween and writes excellent blogs on all sorts of ideas, my favourites are her beauty blogs - definitely worth a look, you'll be hooked.
- Julie Ann Art: DIY Halloween Decorations
Beautiful do it yourself Halloween Decorations for your home and parties.