3 Festive Ways to Decorate Your Home this Halloween

For many, Halloween is a favorite time of the year. It means cozy nights in, delicious pumpkin recipes, festive baking, and fun costumes and decorations to get the house Halloween-ready.

While you can always head out of town to enjoy Halloween events and celebrations, there’s nothing stopping you from pulling out all the stops at your home. Halloween is a great time to spend quality time with the whole family and decorating the house is one of the best ways to carry on the festive spirit.

Here are three fun and easy ways to style up your home and garden in time for October 31^st!

Table of Contents

1. Create a chicken wire ghoul for your yard.

DIY Chicken Wire Halloween Ghost - Step by Step Guide

This is a great craft project if you have some spare chicken wire in your shed. If not, you can purchase chicken wire at a very reasonable price from most DIY stores. You won’t need many materials either, and the step-by-step guide below is super easy to follow.

The Materials You’ll Need

20in x 32ft chicken wire (0.5in hole size)
Wirecutter tool
Pliers
Safety gloves
6.5 x 10ft piece of tulle fabric (available on Amazon)
5ft long wire (this should come with your fence)
A piece of black fabric
Scissors

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Gather all your supplies, create a level workspace, and put on your safety gloves.

2. Cut the chicken wire to be 11ft long and fold it in half.

3. Use an object that is similar to the shape of a head and place it to the fold, then mold the wire around the shape of the object until it resembles a head.

4. Once the shape of the head is to your liking, move the chicken wire to one side and keep it somewhere safe away from young children.

5. Cut the remaining chicken wire into two pieces and fold each one in half. These will form the left and right arm of your ghost.

6. Take one arm piece and at the fold, bend the wire in the shape of an arm. Then bend the sides inward to resemble the curve of the waist. Repeat with the other remaining piece of chicken wire.

7. Once the arms are finished, bring back the torso you made earlier and place the arms on each side of the body.

8. Take one of the arms and use pliers to cut into the small 0.5in holes to create open splinters of wire that can be twisted to attach the arm sections to the torso.

9. Repeat this for both sides of the arm, and then again for the other arm. Your finished ghoul should look seamless with the limbs in continuation of the body.

10. To make your structure more stable, fold a small section along the bottom. This will create a more solid base and help it stand up on the ground.

11. For the definition of the waist, take the 5ft long piece of wire and wrap it around the center of the body.

12. Twist the wire and tighten it. This will make your figure seem more realistic and ghost-like.

13. To make a face, cut out pieces of black fabric and glue them to the wire. Use round circles for the eyes and a similar, slightly more elongated shape for the mouth for a ‘screaming ghost’ effect.

14. Place your finished ghoul in the desired spot, whether that’s in the home or in the yard.

15. Take the tulle fabric and fully cover the wire ghost with it.

To see the full step-by-step guide with photos, head over to this online guide.

How to Make Your Chicken Wire Ghost Look Great at Night

These fantastic chicken wire ghouls look great in the day and are especially spooky at dusk. But if you want to bring your display to life after the sun sets, there are a few ways you can decorate it.

Surround your ghost with glowing jack-o-lanterns, and make sure they are in a well-lit area. You may want to add some hanging lanterns outside for more atmospheric lighting. To really make the figures stand out, use glow-in-the-dark spray paint and spray all over the tulle fabric.

Securing Your Structure Outdoors

If you bend the bottom of the structure sufficiently, the base should be hard enough to stand up on its own and withstand a gentle breeze. However, if there’s bad weather brewing and you’re worried about your ghoul getting blown over by a gust of wind, try securing it to the ground. You can:

Use fixing pegs or anchor pegs to nail them into your lawn or a soil/clay base
Create a fold at the bottom and securing in place with heavy rocks
Use leftover wire to secure the back of the ghoul to a post or a hook in the wall

2. Turn Your Pumpkins Into Beautiful Vases

Jack-o-lanterns are a classic way of lighting up your porch or front yard, showing your neighborly spirit while warding off evil spirits. But if you’re looking for a creative way to use pumpkins indoors, turn these squash vegetables into pretty pumpkin vases for your dining table or kitchen countertop.

Instead of carving, you can simply etch your design onto the pumpkin or you can even leave it plain. All you need to do is carve a hole in the top, scoop out the insides, then place your blooms in and fill with water.

What to Do with the Leftover Pumpkin

When you clean out pumpkins to make pumpkin vases, you’ll be left with a lot of innards. But, don’t throw those away! There are so many different fall recipes that you can make with them.

Whether you’re looking for sweet or savory, make sure you put your pumpkin insides to good use. Recipe ideas include:

Pumpkin soup
Spice pumpkin pie
Pumpkin ravioli
Pumpkin cookies
Pumpkin muffins
Oatmeal pumpkin bread
Homemade pumpkin ice cream

You can even eat the pumpkin seeds, leaving zero waste with your Halloween decorating this year. See our recent blog post to find out how to use the seeds in your home cooking.

3. Decorate your garden with seasonal flowers.

When it comes to creating a charming floral display that’s fitting for the spooky season, there are many dark botanicals that you grow or buy.

The Andean Silver-Leaf Sage (Salvia discolor) blooms until mid-fall and has spikes of purple/black parrot’s beak flowers with silvery-green calyces that are perfect for a bit of drama.

The Black Hollyhock (Alcea rosea Nigra) flower with jet back petals also blooms in the fall and the Viola ‘Molly Sanderson’s’ flower is known to stick around well into November.

Between the chicken wire ghost, pumpkin vases, and beautiful fall flowers, we hope you can find something in this article to get you into the Halloween spirit.

If you liked this article, pin the step-by-step guide below!