October 27, 2015 Maybe Brianna Didn’t Ruin Halloween After All?!… MY SPOOK-TACULAR HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS!! Okay, remember last week when I told you how Brianna went bonkers in the craft store and ruined my chances of getting some spooky new Halloween decorations? UGH!!! She is SO totally annoying! But. When we got home, I pulled out our totally sad, pathetic decorations and decided this could. Not. Be. No way were we putting these sad, cracked pumpkins out again. And even if Mom wouldn’t buy me that cool giant spider at the craft store, I’m creative! I could come up with some cool decorations using stuff I found around the house. And you know what? I did! And you can too!! I started with black construction paper. Pretty low-tech, right? But you don’t even need awesome art skills like mine to cut bat shapes out of black paper and tape them inside your windows. (Probably get permission first—my mom got kind of mad when she saw me, but then I showed her how the Scotch tape just peels right off.) The other thing that looks cool is taping simple, spooky shapes on the INSIDE of a lampshade—just be sure the light is off when you do this. When you turn the light on, the silhouette shines through really clearly. And if you’re not confident in your ability to draw the outline of a bat, just google ‘Bat Template’ and search the images. You can do the same with Ghost Template or Witch Template or whatever! Next, I turned to the trash! NO, I didn’t go through all the ooey-gooey grossness in the trash bags. I pulled out some nice, clean UNUSED trash bags and set to work making them into super spooky spider webs to hang on my bedroom door. Maybe that will keep Brianna out!! You fold them and cut them like paper snowflakes. You can see instructions here: http://howaboutorange.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/cheap-trash-bag-halloween-decorating.html Since the trash bags worked out so well, I wondered what the recycling might hold—and I found a couple things! Milk jugs and toilet paper rolls! Spooky right? LOL!!! Well, not yet. But let’s start with the milk jugs—this is SO simple! You need the sort of transparent plastic kind of milk jug. It won’t work as well with white jugs you can’t see through, and it definitely won’t work with rectangular cardboard milk containers. But if you’ve got the clear plastic kind, start by cleaning them out really well. You don’t want Halloween decorations that smell like sour milk! (Or maybe you do…that might be scary!) Then use a Sharpie to draw ghostly eyes and mouths on the biggest side of the milk jug (the one without the handle). You could also cut circles out of black construction paper and tape them on. These are cute as they are, but you can also make them even spookier by lighting them up and setting them in a windowsill. The instructions show you how to use Christmas lights. You could also use glow sticks, or battery-operated tea-light candles, which your parents might already have around in other holiday decorations. Here are instructions: http://eighteen25.com/?b2w=http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2010/09/todays-project-spirit-jugs.html Okay, now the toilet paper rolls! These are so simple and so spooky! You just cut spooky eyes into toilet paper rolls, then stick a glowstick inside. I know I still had some glowsticks left over from last Halloween. If you don’t have glowsticks, you could also use some of the little tea lights mentioned above. Then you stick your spooky glowing eyes in bushes or peeking out of the mailbox and anywhere else a spooky creature might lurk. (Don’t activate the glowsticks until it’s dark on Halloween, because they only glow for a few hours.) Instructions here: http://www.rustandsunshine.com/2012/10/glowing-eyes.html Okay, finally: I really wanted a cool outside decoration, since I couldn’t have the awesome motion-activated zombie family for the front lawn. I was so excited when I found instructions for these really cool light-up ghosts for the front yard. They do involve outdoor lights, like Christmas lights, so you might need some parental help figuring out the outside plug situation, but aside from that they’re really simple. You need a tomato cage – which is NOT a place to put wild and crazy tomatoes in time-out. It’s one of those wire structures tomato plants grow around. You also need a white pillowcase OR a white garbage bag, a string of white lights, and a Sharpie. That’s it. They’re soooo cute!! You can find instructions here: http://princesspinkygirl.com/tomato-cage-halloween-ghosts/2/ I hope you guys like my cool, thrifty Halloween decorations! Let me know if you have some spooky ideas of your own!! Post your comments below!