Guest Post – Budget Halloween Decorating

This post comes to us from Ruth at Living Well, Spending Less.

I just love holidays.  Luckily for me, my 4 year-old has inherited my enthusiasm for all things holiday, and between the two of us, we could spend hours planning all the fun we will have on all our special days. The skies the limit when it comes to ideas, but all those ideas come with a price tag, and my decorations also need to fit my budget.   I’m not so much creative as I am determined.  If I see a look I like, I will figure out a way to imitate it at a price I can afford.   This year  I have found so many great ideas to inspire me, I hardly know where to begin!Here is my inspiration:

And here are my ideas:

• Make decorated sugar cookies, (a must for every holiday in this house.)  I was thinking of splurging on a new set of Halloween cookie cutters until I saw these adorable round black and white cookies.  Classy and cost-effective–now that’s what I call a project!  (Click here to read my sugar cookie tutorial.)
• Yard signs made from scrap pieces of wood and painted with Halloween themes.  I’m pretty sure I can find some basic shapes online (cats, bats, haunted house, etc.) to make homemade stencils.  Hopefully I can enlist my husband to gather the scrap wood and make my signs….
• Lots and lots of homemade snakes (made from ribbon) and spiders (made from pom-poms and pipe cleaners.)  It will be a double bonus because I’m always looking for kid-friendly craft projects!
• Homemade “pumpkin” luminaries made from tin-cans spray painted orange and then punched with jack o’ lantern faces using a hammer and nail.
• I love the idea of bat, cat, and rat sillouhettes cut from black paper.  Again, the shapes shouldn’t be too hard to find, and I have plenty of black construction paper lying around, since my daughter only likes “nice” colors.  Paper bat chains will also be fun!  We don’t have a mantel to decorate (much to my chagrin, but really, who needs a fireplace in Florida?), but I could use them on my bookshelves.
• I also love the idea of covering existing mirrors and picture frames with foil, then painting scary eyes on the foil.  And now that I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure Walgreens had a good deal on foil this week with an in-ad coupons.   Hmmmm….I may have to stock up!
• I am convinced that now that I have unburied my sewing machine from the garage, where it has been hibernating for the past 3 years, I can re-create that adorable “Trick or Treat” pennant banner.  I also LOVE the wooden letters spelling “Boo.”  So simple, and yet so effective.
• I like hanging wreaths on my double front doors for each season, and I’m pretty sure I can make this candy one shown above.  However, I’ll have to price out the candy before I can commit. 
• What would Halloween be without pumpkins?  I like the idea of grouping multiple pumpkins together and then carving out leaf designs instead of traditional faces.
• A “Halloween Tree” is a cute idea, and super cheap if you don’t live in Florida and have trees that actually produce branches instead of palm fronds.  Just spray paint it black, stick it in a pot or can of rocks, and then make little ornaments out of paper.  Once again, I may have to recruit my husband for help in finding a real tree.