by Conny Manero

Created on: October 03, 2010

Whether you’re planning on having a small family gathering or throwing a big Halloween party for friends and neighbors, turning down the lights and playing some scary music is not enough, you will need to create the right atmosphere.  Halloween night belongs to ghosts and goblins, when the dead rise from the grave and crows, rats and spiders are there to welcome them. 

To party with them or at least be sympathetic with their plight, your house needs to be suitably attired.  The following are some cheap Halloween decorating ideas.

Ghosts

You will need at two or more white balloons for this trick.  Fill the balloons with helium, attach different length of string and secure the string with weights so they don’t float to the ceiling.  Cover the balloons with a white curtain or bed sheet.  To get some movement in the balloons, enlist the help of a fan turned on to the lowest setting.  Your ghosts will gently sway in the breeze.

Spider

Fill a black balloon with Helium and let it float to the ceiling.  Cut eight pieces of black streamer and attach one end with tape to the black balloon and the other end to various points on the ceiling or walls, thus creating the look of the spiders’ legs.  If you want you can give the spider a face by using white or silver paint to paint eyes and a mouth on the spider.  A word of advice though, this is not a good idea if any of your guests are afraid of spiders.

Coffins

If you have a couple of shoeboxes, you can paint them black or brown and decorate them to look like coffins.  For an open casket, place a skeleton on top of a pile of cotton wool or Kleenex tissues.

Tombstone

Get some Styrofoam and cut it so that it’s flat on the bottom and rounded on top.  Paint the Styrofoam grey with the letters R.I.P. in black with your guests’ names and a message.  That will creep them out.

Cardboard

Get some black cardboard and draw various sizes of bats, rats, birds and cats on it.  With a red pencil or paint, give the animals eyes, a mouth and whiskers.  Cut out the drawings and attach them with sticky tape to the walls or windows.

On orange cardboard you can draw pumpkins and jack o lanterns.  After cutting them out decorate them with leafs drawn and cut out from green cardboard.

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