Welcome to my Halloween Home Tour!
If you stopped by looking for elegant fall foliage arrangements or anything crafted from burlap, I’m afraid you have the wrong Halloween Home Tour.
(Sorry, Burlap Lovers. It’s scratchy. I don’t like it.)
Our Halloween Home Tour décor is more $1 Bin than BHG. It may not be high end, but it does make us happy.
So come on in and help yourself to some candy corn.
Oh … and look out for the witch. She likes to scare new people.
The first stop on our Halloween Home Tour is the front door. My home actually has two full-sized doors, which can get pricey when you have to buy two matching wreathes to decorate them. I did a little something different this year based on an idea I saw on Pinterest.
Total cost: $1.50.
Here’s my sketch.
And here are our Giant Spooky Eyes!
I cut out the eyes, eyebrows and teeth from three squares of poster board that cost 50 cents each. My 4-year-old son painted the eyebrows while I did the eyes. As we were taping them to our storm doors, he had a great idea to add a bottom row of teeth—and to make them squares.
He was pretty adamant about the squares.
It is important to listen to your kids—even the little ones. They see the world differently than you do and sometimes they have really good ideas. Our Giant Spooky Eyes don’t look exactly like the ones I saw on Pinterest 🙂 but that’s OK. We are already planning our Giant Santa Face for Christmas.
* * *
I mentioned the $1 Bin earlier. That’s where we got these paper lantern ghosts and it is also our favorite spot for buying holiday window clings.
I was never that into window clings before, but they are perfect for little kids—inexpensive and easy to apply. My son can stick them all over the window however he wants.
Upside down? That’s OK. It’s his deal. If he likes it, I like it. I’m not going to argue with a 4-year-old over the placement of a window cling. It’s not worth it.
I have a nice collection of pumpkins I usually scatter around the house. This year we decided to make a pumpkin patch in the living room. I’m sure we violated all kinds of Very Important Design Rules with our display. Again, that’s OK. I think it is more important to involve your kids in holiday decorating—and let them really do things—rather than hovering over them and being a stickler for rules because you think it should look a certain way.
It’s just a ceramic pumpkin with a heck of a lot of glitter sprayed on it. It can go wherever.
There are a few things I don’t let my 4-year-old handle—like these taller-than-him vintage witch and skeleton decorations. Some of the bits of tape holding them together are older than ME!
These are the Halloween decorations my mom remembers on the front door of her childhood home. When she grew up and became a teacher, she used them in her classroom. Now I have them and I love carefully pulling them out of the box every year, like saying hello again to old friends.
That’s our Halloween Home Tour! I realize in a few years my son will probably have no interest in helping me arrange glittery ceramic pumpkins on a table. That’s OK. Maybe then I will move on to elegant fall foliage arrangements. But right now, my little boy is 4—old enough to walk around on his own, but little enough to still hold my hand.
We pulled into our driveway the other day and he said, “Look Mommy! There’s our Spooky Eyes! They sure look spooooooky!”
Yeah, I know they don’t look perfect.
But they look perfect to him.
And the memory of making them together is just perfect to me.
Happy Halloween!
~ Courtney
Looking for the perfect thing to make your home festive this fall? Come to All Things New Again!
All Things New Again is a furniture store and paint boutique in Leesburg, Virginia (about an hour or so west of Washington, D.C.). We sell painted furniture, home decor and lots of seasonal decorations. DIY your own awesome holiday decorations at one of our Saturday Morning Paint Workshops. Click here for our current schedule.
Paint with us — wherever you live! Our next Virtual Paint Party is coming up on October 26.
Order a kit, gather your supplies and tune in and paint with us. Click here for details.
