Halloween has always been, without doubt, one of my favorite times of year.
I look forward to it almost as much as I look forward to Christmas - I love the opportunity to create spooky-themed treats for the kids, to dress up and get a bit silly, to throw a party (in normal circumstances...not so much this year!) and to go all out on decorating the house!
I probably get this from my Mum, who has always gone to town to celebrate all possible occasions ever since I was little - but its fair to say that Halloween decor has come a long way since the Halloweens of my own childhood which involved lots of torn up black bin bags being draped on the walls and plenty of terrifying plastic witch masks!
This year, I decided that I wanted to really make the most of the Halloween season. It's been a rough year for everybody, and my own children missed out on their much anticipated trip to Walt Disney World which should have taken place at the start of October. They had so been looking forward to visiting for Halloween season, getting to go trick or treating in the parks and were so excited about visiting all of the American stores to see their fantastic Halloween decorations.
So I wanted to take the opportunity to bring as much Halloween cheer to our own home as I possibly could for them.
Instead of only decorating for the few days before and after Halloween like I usually would, I decided to decorate for the whole of October instead.
Here's a little look at the home decor I've put up.
First up, we decided this was the perfect year to start the tradition of a Halloween tree!
I look forward to our Christmas tree going up all year long, and with the dark nights drawing in - October really does seem the perfect time to indulge in lots of lovely fairy lights. So the idea of a Halloween tree has always really appealed to me - but I always put it off, telling myself it was a bit too wacky and that it would probably be expensive.
To my surprise, it turned out that wasn't the case at all - I bought a 5 foot black christmas tree online for £15, and managed to find Halloween fairy lights along with Halloween tinsel at the pound shop. I also found some orange baubles and splurged on some extravagant but beautiful Disney Villain baubles too. We topped the tree with a simple witches hat and I think it finished it off perfectly - I absolutely love our Halloween tree and can't believe I hadn't indulged in one soon!
This is definitely going to be an annual tradition for us from now on!
Of course, the tree would look quite lonely by itself and so we gave the rest of the living room a seasonal makeover too!
We started with some lovely autumnal fairy lights for around the fireplace and TV, which really add a lovely ambience to the room. I then draped an autumnal garland over the mirror, as it looked a bit bare in comparison to the rest of the room.
I swapped out our usual print on the fireplace for something more in keeping with the season - I couldn't find any Halloween prints I liked online and so I decided to make my own instead!
I went with a quote from my all time favorite Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus - but I came up against a bit of a problem when I couldn't find a suitably spooky font to use.
Luckily I discovered some great font freebies online which were absolutely perfect - I downloaded the Midnight Show font from Font Bundles, and created a print that I'm really happy with without it costing more than the price of a piece of paper and a bit of ink! Ideal!
Of course, this all looks wonderful from inside the house but from outside the house was looking rather bland.
So I decided to decorate our front door for the season too!
Using some plain black cardboard, I created a little background square in the upper middle section of the door.
I then cut some eye shapes out of white paper, using black paper for the pupils....I stuck those on to the black background, and then used layers of toilet roll to wrap the door to give it a Mummy effect!
To complete the look, I used my font freebies from Font Bundles once again to create a speech bubble effect wishing passers by a Happy Halloween. I'm really pleased with how it turned out as well as how simple and cost effective it was!
The kids were absolutely delighted when they saw it!
Do you celebrate Halloween at home? What are your plans for a Covid-safe Halloween in 2020?
I'll be sharing some tips for throwing a Halloween party at home for your family soon.
If you enjoy my blog, please consider following me on Bloglovin'
