Halloween Decoration Pointers on the Cheap

I'm not great at going all out for Halloween, but my sister is. What she does, I thought was time consuming and expensive, but it isn't. So, here are some of her secrets for simple but ghoulish decorations.

1. This one is easy peasy. Take an old flannel shirt and jeans plus hat and stuff them with whatever you want. Add a little hay for effect and a pumpkin or balloon for a head. Viola! A Scarecrow.

2. To add atmosphere, fill a jar with red water (food coloring or beet juice will do), add vampire fangs, eyeball and amputated body parts candy, then drape with webs and spiders.

3. To get that eerie glow on your porch, use green, black and red light bulbs.

4. Make your space creepier by making streamers out of tan plastic groceries bags. Cut into strips starting at the bottom seam. You can dip them in slime to add that dripping effect.

5. To add that serial killer effect, put a baseball bat covered with fake blood randomly on the porch. Of course any blunt object will work (candlestick maybe?). See recipe for blood below.

6. Get old branches from your fall yard cleanup, stick them into gourds to anchor and attach plastic ravens, bats, or whatever you consider spooky to the branches. Spread them out.

And my favorite! This freaked me out! My sister put a silhouette of a woman holding her head in a window. It was life sized! All she did was paint cardboard black and cut out the figure. She added a sheer curtain and dim lighting.

Get creative and do your own thing by experimenting. You could come up with something even better than these, who knows?