‘Tis the spooky season of Halloween! I’ve always been fascinated by witches, black cats, and the whimsical supernatural vibe of this holiday. The various ways people mark the occasion around the world in different spiritual practices is also interesting to me, especially when it comes to how people choose to decorate their houses with Halloween décor.
When I think of Halloween and decorations, I somehow think of trick or treating. This wasn’t really a thing for my siblings and me growing up. One, because we lived in “the middle of nowhere” as one friend called it, and two because in our little part of the world, it isn’t really a thing.
Each year now living in suburbia I do prepare for just in case scenarios where kids of the neighbourhood might knock on my door expecting something. Thankfully so far there have been no knocks on the door. The scariest part of Halloween for me has been a potential knock on the door. I think that meme was right when it said, “a closed door is a happy door.” If it did happen, I probably wouldn’t answer anyway, and instead pretend I’m not home. Not very fun of me, but I’m not opening my door to random folk at night, especially living alone.
One year when we were younger, my sister and I decided to trick or treat our own house dressed up as ghosts. We draped ourselves in sheets, fixed paper plate “masks” to our faces (with cut out eyes and tied around our heads with string), and boldly knocked on our front door.
We probably had our mum going for a split second when she answered the door but my sister and I couldn’t quite manage to get out the words “trick or treat!” without dissolving into giggles. So that is my one and only trick or treating experience.
Before our ghostly trick or treating experience, as a very young kid I was fascinated by and often wrote about witches with cats and other magical things. A sign of things to come maybe…
So for my eighth birthday, we held a Halloween party – anyone who has themed parties needs to have a least one Halloween one, right? I dressed up as a witch (surprise!) and my sister dressed up as a black cat in full costume.
A photo from the archives! Me (8) as a witch on the left and my sister (4) as a black cat on the right.
Looking through pictures of this birthday party and with Halloween just around the corner, I was moved to write a post with inspiration for Halloween home décor ideas that match the season.
As a general rule I’d recommend using what you already have, and using natural materials wherever possible. We want to celebrate Halloween in style but we don’t want to kill the planet with consumerism and harsh synthetic materials to do it. With any decorations I suggest here, get creative and find ways to make these décor ideas sustainable – I’d love to hear what you come up with!
So let’s get to it, here are the eight Halloween décor ideas inspired by my eighth birthday party.
1) Spider Webs
Walking around near where I live, there’s one house in particular that really gets into the Halloween spirit. So much so that their entire front yard turns into some sort of graveyard and their hedge is strewn with cobwebs. I don’t know what these spider webs are made of, but they create the creepy eerie effect of an abandoned haunted house.
For my birthday party, we had these webs indoors, bought and authentic, as I like to joke.
In our current bathroom for a whole year, we had a genuine authentic home-spun spider web that spanned the whole frosted bathroom window (before I managed to relocate the spiders – I asked them to please leave because I needed to open the window at some point, and they left soon after). I decided it was Halloween coming up, so I’d just leave it. With no spiders to maintain it after they relocated, it gradually fell off the window and created a nice creepy effect. I eventually removed it, but it was great while it lasted.
Please be mindful though that these synthetic spider webs strewn around outside can pose a serious risk to bats and other wildlife in your area as they can get stuck and potentially injured (sometimes fatally). My strong suggestion is to keep it indoors.
2) Pumpkins (Hanging Balloons & Paper Mache)
For my party, we decked one room out to be the designated “Spooky Mansion.” Walking in through Halloween-coloured streamers of black, purple and orange, the ceiling was hung with orange balloons that had jack-o’-lantern faces drawn on them in black pen, so that they looked reminiscent of a carved pumpkin. I’m not a fan of balloons nowadays because of the whole environmental thing, but they did look very effective.
Something else we did was to make paper mache ‘carved pumpkins’ and put tea light candles in them (take all the necessary safety precautions – use your common sense if you’re incorporating candles in any capacity in your Halloween decorating; candles in ornate candlesticks as well can be effective) and put them up on the mantelpiece looking nice and sinister.
3) Stars
Really simple but effective is to hang cardboard cut-outs of stars up (they can be yellow, gold, silver, any colours you like, and you could even include a full or crescent moon for the full Halloween effect) against a black sheet as a backdrop. Very effective.
4) A Skeleton in the Closet (bonus points for glow in the dark!)
Something that we had for my party was a small plastic glow in the dark skeleton that we hung up with the stars on a black sheet backdrop that blacked out the windows.
I wouldn’t recommend going out and buying a plastic glow in the dark skeleton for environmental reasons, but incorporating a skeleton into the décor could be a good idea. A fake skeleton of course – just covering myself.
5) Spiders
Instead of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ (who came up with that in the first place I have no idea), my mum was and still is very creative at coming up with new game ideas, and came up with the idea of ‘throw the spider into the web’.
With felt spiders filled with beans, black yarn strips for legs, and with a Velcro square on its underside, my friends and I each took turns to throw our three spiders at a large cardboard poster that was black, with a silver art pen drawn spider web on it, with a Velcro strip in the very centre which was the aim – to get the spider stuck to the centre of the web. Genius and fun.
6) Ghosts
This probably harkens back to the original Halloween, Samhain, which is very focused on those who have passed, and the spiritual otherworldly element of Halloween.
However you want to incorporate ghosts into your Halloween décor, get creative. This is probably the absolute simplest costume for a party and the perfect costume for an introvert.
7) Bats
As well as pumpkins hung from the ceiling, any kind of bat decoration or having them hanging in their natural sleeping position upside-down along curtain rails could be effective.
Recently, in order to help out Bat Rescue SA with fundraising efforts I knitted a few bats:
There are many good patterns out there if you’re interested in knitting your own bats.
8) Black Cats
And last but certainly not least, and the most important element of Halloween décor and related festivities in my opinion is the cat, or specifically the black cat. Associated with witches, black cats or ‘voids’ as they’re known in cat enthusiast circles, have a wonderful mysteriousness about them that make décor resembling them perfect for the spooky season.
For my party, my mum baked and decorated a birthday cake (from a Women’s Weekly cake book) to look like a black cat.
Final Thoughts
The Halloween themed party was one of my favourites and most memorable (with my current partner in attendance! We’ve known each other for yonks) as a kid. The way everything was decorated and transformed was magical and creepy at the same time – the perfect Halloween décor combination.
What did you think of these Halloween décor ideas? Did you think of any ways to make them environmentally sustainable?
Let me know your quiet thoughts in the comments below or email me at [email protected].
Much love from me and happy decorating!
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