Halloween on a Budget: Costumes, Food, and Decorations for Less

According to this piece on Snopes.com, the myth that Halloween is the second most popular Holiday for Americans to their money on has finally been debunked. Halloween, with its costumes and goulish merriment, still brings in a cool five billion dollars each year in economic stimulus, but the spooky, candy-filled homage is routinely edged out by other American favorites such as Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, and of Christmas.

Still, five billion dollars is nothing to scoff at, and it is estimated by Brian Unger here at NPR.com that almost two billion of that will be spent on costuming ourselves for the evening's festivities, while 1.5 billion will go towards that coveted Halloween candy, and a whopping 1.3 billion of those Halloween dollars will be spent on Halloween decorations.

When all these numbers break down according to demographics (men tend to outspend women, families with young children spend more than those with no kids, etc), the point is that if you celebrate Halloween, and most of us do, you're likely to spend between $50-$75 minimum to enjoy the holiday this year.

Devilishly Delightful Halloween Decor

So how can you cut some Halloween spending without cutting the spook-factor or fun? Do a lot yourself! Instead of opting for those adorable, pre-fabricated Halloween decorations that are conveniently located everywhere you like, and priced at $10, $15 or even $20, consider this: how often do you just go around buying things for your home on a whim? Now consider that the home decor you choose for Halloween will give you maybe three weeks of use per year, and the rest of the time will live in a box, drawer or cupboard, unseen and out of season.

Commit to spending more time this year than money. Shop early and keep it practical, and your Halloween house can be as haunted as the next in a flash! Pick up a few bags of Halloween cobwebs (usually $2-4 a bag) to stretch across your home and front yard. If you have a storm door, this effect is especially spooky, as you can really twist and manipulate the webs and tuck the folds in on themselves.

Bushes and trees are another option, and don't forget your home's interior! These webs look realistically gauzy and creepy stretched across chandeliers and the tops of door frames. Clear thumb-tacks will help you give a seamless appearance when pinning a web into a corner by the ceiling. Clear tacks are budget-friendly and will be useful in other areas of your Halloween decorating, so pick up a box at your local 99 cents store!

To complete the spiderweb effect, you'll of course need to fashion some....ducks! Just kidding. A few boxes of black crafting pipe cleaners ($1-2 each) will be most useful in your Halloween decor, especially when crafting spiders for your webs. Create a spider's body by flexing a pipe cleaner into an hourglass shape, connecting eight legs at appropriate spacings and giving them bends to simulate leg joints. Practice on a few, and use your best to position on your webs. Make smaller ones out of pipe cleaners you cut down to create spooky baby spiderlings!

Those black pipe cleaners will come in handy if you're entertaining, as you can use them to fashion some spooky and scrumptious Halloween Spidercakes! Simply bake off a batch of store-bought cupcake mix ($1-2), in a cupcake pan lined with Halloween colored papers ($1, grocery stores), frost with chocolate frosting and use white or red icing to make big, googly eyes. Next, insert your pipe cleaners, pre-cut and bent into jointed legs, to create the illusion of spiders walking around your dessert tray! The kids will love them, and its a great way to use up the rest of those pipe cleaners.

Creepy-Cheap Halloween Costumes

If you don't want your costume to bust your Halloween budget, keep it simple! Whichever character or concept you choose, there is the easy, store-bought route, and the thrifty one. Shy away from those tempting and easy-looking packaged costumes which will run you anywhere from $30 to $50, and get creative!

Look for solid-colored clothing pieces that you or your child might be able to use at other times of the year, craft your own zombie make-up from food coloring, flour, or whatever will work, and avoid going too far out with the "character" accessories. Especially on kids' Halloween costumes, you don't have to buy the shoes, the hat, the wings, the tail, the ears, the jewelry AND the weapon props to complete the look. Pick one or two of these and let them (and your handiwork) shine!

When building your Halloween costume, utilize the local thrift store, dollar store and keep your eyes open for bargain items at the big-box chain stores. Halloween specialty shops will begin to pop up as we near October, opening a few weeks before the big day and closing their doors and packing it in on Nov. 1st. Certainly stop by these stores to get ideas and take advantage of their best deals. However, avoid getting carried away at these Halloween utopias; as terrifyingly tempting as it may be to blow your entire Halloween budget on a life-size, robotronic, bloody Mike Myers figure, this will not seem like the most savvy choice later on as you sit alone, staring it in disdain on Halloween in your undecorated house, with no costume or candy to give away. Also worth mentioning, at least in Tucson, these stores operate under a "no returns or exchanges" policy.

Haunt Your Halloween House on a Batty Budget

Avoid getting sucked in to purchasing big, elaborate items or lighting and sound systems. If you're having a huge Halloween bash, maybe it does make sense to pop $30 or more on a fog machine to set the mood. Then again, maybe not. Create your own Haunted House by using dimmed lights, candles, draping fabrics and positioning items to cast specific shadows, and getting creative with your offerings. Consider a "feel-your-way-through" feature for your Halloween fright-fest!

Peeled grapes in a bowl feel an awful lot like eyeballs; cold spaghetti twirled just so and finished off with firm-set clear gelatin, can feel, to a hand unwittingly shoved in it, like oozing brains.
Hot dogs artfully arranged on a platter and surrounded by gore can evoke thoughts of intestines and other innards. How to craft some gore? Combine red or purple pickled cabbage with some ketchup, and dabble in some heavy "clots" of grape or strawberry jelly. Peanut butter dyed with red food coloring can add some texture. Now just set up a "route" throughout your home for Haunted House guests to follow, and line these and similar items on tables along the way, taking care to set things up to minimize mess (have paper towels ready, line the area of floor just below the bowls with plastic, etc).

If the fog is a must-have, forget those fancy machines with their sticker-shock-worthy price tags! Simply visit your local grocer for some dry ice (often located in a deep freezer near the door and roughly $2 a pound). It's that simple! Well, almost. There are some rules it is wise to understand...Never handle it directly. That's the most important one. Dry ice is far colder than anything your skin can tolerate, so keep it out of reach of kids and always use heavy gloves or, better yet, tongs to handle it. Now simply choose a large enough container to satisfy your display, fill it with hot water (and be prepared to keep topping it off, as the heat from the water is what produces the fog when contacting dry ice), and enjoy! Expect to use about a pound of dry ice for every ten-fifteen minutes of fog you want.

Halloween Candy Cost-Cutting

Halloween candy is a must-buy item, and not an area to skimp on. Nobody likes getting those generic, no-name candies that can't even be identified. Furthermore, the cheaper the candy, the more cheaply assembled, and most parents eschew anything from their child's pail that has come partially unwrapped. Do your neighbors, and their kids, a favor and pop for the good stuff; just buy it earlier in the year, when its on sale. Also, buy a popular candy, but one not-so-popular in your household, so it actually stays on the back shelf of the pantry until Halloween!

Sources : Brian Unger's "Americans Spend Billions on Halloween" at NPR.com
Author Unknown at Snopes.com - "Halloween Sales"