Decorating Your Front Porch for Halloween Using Everyday Items

With Halloween quickly approaching and the official decorating season about to begin, you may be wondering how you will go about setting up a spooky scene on your front porch. Trick-or-treaters and passers-by delight in a well-dressed front door and yard. Party and decorating stores begin to line their shelves early with a wide assortment of cobwebs, cauldrons, witches, ghosts and goblins. Starting off the spending season by blowing your budget wide open isn't necessary to achieve a hauntingly fantastic front porch!

If you're just starting out then it's probably necessary to budget some money to start collecting your stockpile of reusable Halloween gear. Stay away from the cheap cardboard cut outs as they aren't likely to survive many years in your garage, and the plastic window stickers often don't last the first season. Invest in a plastic skeleton - you can find them life size and as cheap as $10. A few yards of cheesecloth in white and in black is relatively inexpensive and if cared for properly will last a long time. Fake cobwebs are fun for one year but are a pain when you have to take them down and don't last season after season. They're cheap enough to purchase new each year if you really have to have them. Things like light up skulls and pumpkins are good to have and can be among some of the cheaper decorations to purchase. Don't worry if you don't have everything your first year - building up a good Halloween decoration supply can take a few seasons.

For a pirate themed front porch you'll need the life size skeleton and some items you probably already have. Dress your skeleton in pants and a vest, making sure to roll up the pant legs like you'd see on a pirate. If you're crafty you can fashion your own eye patch or purchase a cheap one for under a dollar. Tie a scarf around the skull and grab an empty bottle of liquor to cradle in his arms. Drape the black cheesecloth around as a backdrop and place a CD player with some spooky music under the cloth (or in this case it's ok to use a cheap cardboard treasure box to complete the look!).

No spooky house is complete without ghosts. For this trick you'll need the white cheesecloth, some white balloons, white rubber bands and some string. Blow up the balloons for the heads and put them in the cloth. Use a rubber band around the neck to make the ghost shape. Tie your ghosts up with string through the rubber band. For a more eerie set of ghost friends you can just use the cheesecloth and string. Hang the center of your cloth up first and then let the cloth fall. Pull up and hang cloth on either side of the head to make it look like arms. Depending on the length of your cheesecloth you can make some truly haunting creations.

Nothing says 'welcome' like a lighted walkway to your front door. You can make pumpkin face luminaries out of some items that you may already have in your home, and if you don't they are cheap to buy. You'll need cardboard, a utility knife or scissors, a pencil, brown paper bags (lunch bags), orange tissue paper, tape, votive candles and some sand (you can use your old sandbox sand if you have any). First draw pumpkin eyes on either side of the bag. If you're using a utility knife to cut out the face you'll need to put the cardboard in the bag so you don't cut the other side. Once your face is cut out you'll tape in the orange tissue paper, making sure all edges are covered by the tape. Fill the bottom of the bag with a few inches of sand and wedge a votive candle into it. When night falls light up your pumpkin face luminaries!

You say you don't want any ordinary carved pumpkin this year? Fancy some of those fun designs that you've seen but don't feel like paying for a book to get the patterns? There are several web sites that allow you to print out free patterns. They have everything from standard pumpkin faces to 'Baby's 1st Halloween' to intricate haunted house designs. http://www.pumpkinlady.com/pattern.htm and http://www.carvingpumpkins.com/ are just two from a long list of web sites with free downloadable patterns.

Take a look around your house and see what ordinary every day items can be transformed into something for a hauntingly fantastic front porch. Take a walk around a party or decorating store to spark your creativity and see what you can make yourself with items you may already have at home. You may have to purchase a few things to get yourself started, but once you're off and running you should be able to skip spending a fortune on Halloween year after year.