How To Decorate Your House for Halloween Halloween is one of the most "decoration friendly" holidays. From the new colors of fall, to traditional Halloween icons like jack-o-lanterns to new fads like "Halloween trees", there's a lot to choose from. A well-decorated house can make Halloween a special and fun time of year for families. And who couldn't use a little more family fun? Here are some suggestions for Halloween house decorating based on different motifs we all commonly see when people decorate their houses for Halloween. (Use the stores noted at your own discretion, I haven't shopped at them personally...) - Go natural. Halloween is a centuries old holiday. Over those centuries, decorating traditions have certainly emerged. Many of these traditions involve nature. One way to decorate your home around this time of year is to embrace those nature-based decorations. This includes, of course, carving a jack-o-lantern (or several) and lighting it on the porch, front steps, or in a window. It also includes objects like cornstalks, haystacks (best kept outdoors) and straw-filled scare crows. You can keep up the theme using natural autumn colors in your home like gold, orange and brown, and using candles with natural scents like cinnamon and vanilla. (Try yankeecandle.com)
- Go Great Pumpkin. As Charlie Brown specials remind us, Halloween is definitely a holiday for kids. Decorating with a kid-friendly theme is a popular option. Jack-o-lanterns are a mainstay, or try easier "paint it yourself" pumpkins. Pseudo-scary monster, witch, ghost or black cat cut outs are available at most Hallmark- type stores, as are Halloween decorations with kids' favorite cartoon characters ranging from SpongeBob to Disney. (Halloween is a big season for selling to kids...) Filling the house with Halloween-themed decorations that kids can enjoy will make Halloween enjoyable for young children. Not as enjoyable as all that candy, but close.
You can also use the crafts your kids will inevitably make in school, or get them to make some crafts of their own at home. Besides the basics - cutting and pasting, watercolors, crayon drawings - you can get more elaborate. Sponges cut in circles and dipped in orange poster paint or ink can become pumpkin stamps great for use on black construction paper. For other craft ideas, check around the Internet at sites geared to kids crafting (like Kids Domain).
- Go scary. Of course, you may want to decorate your home in a creepier manner. Go more trick than treat, in other words. There are plenty of ways to do this, too. Sites like Gore Galore (a PG-13 site, FYI...I mean, it is called "Gore Galore"....) offer everything from creepy dismembered plastic limbs and heads to skulls and gargoyle wall decorations. If you don't want to go all out, buy a few plastic spiders and leave them strategically around your house to scare the family, or swap out a few regular lights with a black light as Halloween gets closer.
- Get a Halloween Tree. If you think decorating trees is just for Christmas - well, you'd be right. However, it seems these days some people also like to decorate trees for Halloween. Of course there are many ways to create a Halloween tree. You can secure a many-forked branch into a pot of soil. You can break out a plastic Christmas tree centerpiece and use that. You can even cut down a real fur tree and bring it inside, just as you would for Christmas. I wouldn't. But you could if you wanted to.
To decorate the tree, use your imagination. Hang kids' crafts or old Halloween photos from black or orange yarn. Hang glo-sticks or twinkling white lights on the tree. Put a witch's hat on the top instead of an angel or star. Place pumpkins at the foot of the tree on a Halloween table covering. You could even use black and orange streamers if you wanted. Your theme is your own to choose and depends on how big the tree is. For some samples, try Williams Sonoma or Halloween Decorating with Terry.
Halloween is a great, fun, festive time. Use your imagination and make your home's décor part of the celebration! http://www.howtodothings.com/family-and-relationships/a3907-how-to-decorate-your-house-for-halloween.html |
October Magick
October Magick
Magick doesn't happen just with spells and rituals. It's the activities and events that allow for fun and memories, or that help others. Here are some suggestions on how to make October Magick...
Donate blood (think of Dracula)
Finish any incomplete projects and pay off lingering bills (if possible) to close out the old year and begin the new year afresh.
Go for a walk and collect twigs, leaves, pinecones, moss, seedpods, and feathers.
Leave food out for the birds and other wild animals.
Light candles, a fireplace or bonfire, put up Halloween lights to get a start on the season of light
If you don't have a wicker man left from Beltane, make one from dried grass or grains of some kind. Burn it in your Sabbat fire. If you don't have a fireplace or firepit, burn him in your cauldron, barbeque grill or hibachi.
Make a Scarecrow
Tell ancestral stories and tales around the fire, or at the dinner table.
Visit cemeteries to do a clean up project, visit ancestors, or just immerse yourself in the history
Have a mask-making ceremony in which you create masks to represent your ancestry.
Rake some leaves and jump in the leaves (especially fun if there is a child around to do this with you)
Decorate your computer with Halloween, Samhain or Autumn wallpaper or screensaver
Make a quilt, crochet an afghan or braid a rug using Autumn colors
Make a music tape of Halloween or Autumn inspired music and songs
Go for a drive strictly for the purpose of foliage gazing
Have a wine tasting party
Learn to weave (think of grandmother spider)
Plant trees (Japanese maple is a great Autumn tree) and flower bulbs
Pick apples from an apple tree and make a home-made pie or cobbler from scratch
Make a big pot of soup
Collect pictures of past Halloween's or Autumn activities and make a scrapbook; add pressed leaves, poems and sayings, seasonal sketches
Gather firewood
Samhain is the best time for divination; learn tarot, runes, using the pendulum, scrying
Start to knit a warm sweater
Visit a charity haunted house
Take a late night walk under the full moon
Make a batch of popcorn and hot spiced cider and watch Halloween movie videos
Gather up and press leaves of red, gold, and yellow
Set up an ancestor altar, with candles and your ancestor's pictures
Buy orange pumpkins and red, green and yellow apples
Easy decorations: a cauldron of apples, a candy dish of candy corn, chains made of black and white beads or paper loops, pumpkins.. carved or not
Make foods of fall; beef stew with thick gravy, apple crisp with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream.... macaroni and cheese (it's orange!)
Make a Halloween tree; paint branches black and gather into a vase with black stones for anchors. Add orange Halloween lights, drape with dried moss and thin black ribbons. Even add ornaments!
Start a nature sketchbook. With the wonderful colors of fall, this is the perfect time to record the leaves changing colors, bare branches against a stormy sky, squirrels stocking up for winter...
Go on a hayride
Bake sugar cookies and cut out with Autumn-shaped cookie cutters. Frost with chocolate, maple and orange flavored frostings
Make or buy onion braids
Buy lots of orange, yellow, brown and gold candles to brighten up dark days and evenings
Make witch balls (clear glass ornament, swirl around silver paint inside, fill with red threads and herbs)
Collect pinecones for decorations and firestarters
Leave food outside as an offering to the dead
Make hot chocolate, French toast and bacon for Sunday Breakfast
Adopt a black cat (or orange or any color)
Watch for ducks and geese flying south for the winter
The most traditional Samhain activity is to prepare an extra plate at the dinner table to honor those passed. After the meal, place the plate outside overnight for any passing creatures. In the morning, bury whatever remains on the plate in the earth.
Buy some new fall clothes; corduroy pants or green denim jeans; a sweater or a college sweatshirt, a suede jacket, new hiking boots
Wear a costume to greet trick or treaters on Halloween night or accompany trick or treaters
Try a new shade of hair color; such as auburn or dark burgundy (red is the color of witch's hair)
Make homemade applesauce, apple dumplings, apple turnovers..
Make popcorn balls
Have a costume party; for kids only, for adults only, or families
Buy pumpkins and carve jack-o-lanterns
Bob for apples, do apple divination, cut an apple cross-wise to see the star that the seeds make. nature's own pentagram
Make caramel apples
Do a Past-life Regression therapy
Start to meditate if you don't already do this
Harvest and dry herbs
Celebrate a late Oktoberfest with beer and German food
Make and/or collect miniature buildings for a miniature Halloween village
Written and Compiled by Cindi Wafstet
© August 2002
Permission to share freely as long as credit is given.
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