Homemade Halloween

Our favorite holiday has always been Halloween. Danny and I look forward to it all year long. Here we are mid-July and I am anxiously awaiting the day I get to drag all of our Halloween decor out. To help contain my excitement I will tell you a little more about our decorations.

To start our Halloween season off I like to make the house fun for the boys. They don't mind the "scarier" decor, but they LOVE the bright, and funny faces that fill the house weeks before it's time to trick or treat.

The pillow cases are just t-shirts that I cut, fringe, and tie to fit our throw pillows. I painted funny faces on them and tied the fringe together. Each year I just untie them and put them away. The other items are also just funny faces painted on random old jars or flower pots.

The wreath was an old Christmas decomesh wreath. The "S" was actually pink, and the little faces were actually bright colored candy (peppermint) ornaments. With a little paint and hot glue we got this :) This is all simple...it cost nothing (because I already had paint and t-shirts).

We also paint our pumpkins together....the boys LOVE to do that! Carving pumpkins is so messy and they ruin....painted pumpkins last much longer!

Somewhere around mid October my friend Marie and I start breaking out the real Halloween decorations. We completely transform my house! We have over 20 boxes of decorations now...I think that is more than most people have for their Christmas decorations!

Some of my favorite items are the old mask in jars and old baby dolls. These are really simple to make. Save your old pickle jars, and any old dolls or mask that people leave at your house from the previous Halloween parties. If you live in a high traffic trick-or-treat neighborhood like us mask are often dropped all along the street in front of your house!

Marie painted this dolls face. We put water with green food coloring in the jar, and added a vase light (I happen to have two dozen of those).

These are old spice jars with melted candle wax on them, random spider rings, eye balls, and a left over mask from a previous Halloween!

This jar has a clearance rack hand in there....we always shop for decorations on the clearance racks/dollar tree AFTER Halloween. You can purchase things for little to nothing.

Another fun thing is to recycle old Christmas decor....I saw on Pintrest where you can spray paint old Christmas Village houses. So I asked all my friends for their old ones and painted them black! So very fun with the dim lighting and a few fake spider webs!

We also stuff old Halloween costumes (Yes...I have a closest dedicated to Halloween costumes). Last year we stuff JigSaw...I now own a red trike so he will be more authentic this year!

You don't have to do this...but I felt like it added a little extra flare. I changed all of the photos in our house with FaceinHole photos. I used my friends faces and black and white photos to create a creepy fun surprise for everyone! They LOVED finding their photos!

I LOVED our food table. I will not even pretend like I cooked any of this...Marie totally saved me again. She used the brain mold to create the jello mold and the spinach dip mold. I will have to get her to write a post on how she did that. She also made the blood slide candy...it was fitting since she and Mark dressed as Dexter and his victim!

The cocktail fingers were just made from boiling cocktail sausage with onions. Cut slits for the knuckle creases and stick an onion on with ketchup...soooo easy!

The brain jello mold I did actually make....just threw several different flavors in the mold and froze it (with adult beverage added).

These brain shots are made from cranberry juice, Baileys, and lime. I do not remember the ratio..but you take a syringe and drop the baileys into the cranberry lime mix and it forms a brain at the bottom. I think I had more fun laughing at our friends faces when they tasted these! The texture is HORRIBLE!

Since we entertain on our carport A LOT and Halloween tends to be cooler at night in our area we decided to enclose the carport with plastic. We used fake blood/paint to create a "kill room" like the ones used in the show Dexter, again it was fitting since we had our own Dexter look-a-likes there. Marie and I had WAY too much fun splattering the room!

Here are a few extra photos of our decor. This looked awesome with the house lights turned off, the lights on the jars turned on and our black lights. However...it is not easy to photograph things that way!

Dry ice plus glow sticks....fun coffee table filler..

Spice rack revamped...all you need is sheer fabric, burlap string, and old tags.

Here is how the baby jar looks when the lights are off and the vase light is on.

I have mentioned the Dexter costumes several times...and our friends who helped us so much. So it is only fitting that I share a picture of them. Halloween is so much more fun when you have friends to share it with!

I can't wait to share Halloween fun this year! I am so excited...