Halloween Decorations on a Budget

Halloween, like other main holidays, is all
about the big decor, big scare, big fun and all of that can easily
lead to a big hole in your pocket. There are, however, some steps you
can take to make that hole significantly smaller. And don't worry the
fun and all the bang will still be big! The good thing about
Halloween is that its the same theme every year. Scary, it never goes
out of style, so you don't need to worry about whats new each year.
The first thing you need to do is go to the attic, garage, or your
closet see what left over decorations you can salvage. You might be
lucky and have plenty if you are the type that saves, but if not
don't you can still work things out. 

Another great way to decorate for Halloween, or any occasion for that matter, is to do
things like this yourself. Make your own decorations, and why not
after all? That way you can kill two birds with one stone. Get your
decorations taken care of and spend quality time with your kids while
doing some fun crafts, for an example. If you get some Red Rosin
paper, some paints and brushes, glue and scissors you would be
surprised of what you will be able to create. You can paint pumpkins,
evil cats or make lanterns, and trust me it doesn't end there, sky is
the limit.

However, if you get stuck during your arts and
crafts sessions, and there is no help in the last years boxes full of
stuff you can do some spending. Dollar stores and Party stores are
always cheap and have a bunch of nonsense in them. You are bound to
find plenty of stuff without spending a lot of money. Be careful not
to get carried away though, just because everything is a dollar we
get the sense that everything is cheap, which it is but then we
forget about the quantities and get a huge total at the checkout. Pay
attention to how much you buy and what you buy to make sure there are
no embarrassing "oops" at the checkout.

Internet is very wonderful, it is a vast space full of so many things
that you could use. If you do some research, you can find anything
for your holiday needs, from recipes to templates for gift boxes, to
instructions on how to carve pumpkins, instructions on how to make
decorations. There are plenty of pictures and templates and arts and
crafts projects that you can use. There is not as much need anymore
to buy the pricey magazines with the seasonal ideas in them, you can
find all that and more online for free.

Make your own Halloween invitations

Halloween is all about scary, fun and most importantly unique, and seeing as how the invitation is like a first impression of the party you need to come up with something pretty darn cool! Not to worry, here is a relatively easy and headache free way to recreate this fun take on invites. You can make these adult friendly with a bunch of gory details, or more funky and PG rated for children. You can even tweak this for a non scary holiday or a party. What we are doing here is making gravestone party invites, with a dead guy inside keeping a scroll with the invite on it.
What you will need to make your own Halloween party invitations:
This will make only one invite, just multiply the ingredients/supplies with the number of invites you need.
- Rectangular flat candy box, this is easily found at any arts and crafts shop (Joann's or Michael's are a couple of well known ones).
- Tissue paper, pick a color that will fit with your color scheme.
- A sheet of printer paper.
- Cookie dough, for this part you can pick any kind that you like however gingerbread or sugar cookies seem to be the best.
- Gingerbread man cookie cutter.
- White icing, if making a light colored cookie (sugar cookie for instance) get black food coloring on top of the white icing.
- Oil Paints or tempera and whatever goes in hand with paints, brush, water cup, some scrap paper for practice and tissue paper.

How to make your own Halloween party invitations:
- First thing to do is decorate the so called "gravestone", so take the crafts box you bought and paint it to resemble a gravestone. On the front "engrave" the name of the person which you are inviting to your party. Make sure the box is completely painted on all sides. Painting the inside is up to you. If you have time go for it, it will make your invite look more put together.
- For this part you might want to make extras, as it's very hard to resist munching on the cookies! You make your regular gingerbread man cookies, however when you go to decorate them with icing draw skeletons. Creepy or cute, it's up to you.
- The third part of this invitation is, of course a message letting the invitees know that they've been invited. Find a photo of some aged paper online and print it out then rip out small square of it and write an invite with all the info in a black gel pen. Ripping will make it look more in character and older than cutting, the gel pen looks better as well and smudges here and there are OK. You can leave it unfolded or fold it, or even roll it up like a little scroll.
- Once your gravestone is dry line the bottom of the box with crinkled tissue paper, there's no need to over do it, one or two sheets is just fine. Place your cookie skeleton onto it and place the scroll next to it or on top of it. Put the lid on and your invitation is all done! Mail or hand deliver to the recipient.