Decorating outdoors for Halloween is contagious: a few pumpkins and scarecrows pop up in September, and store shelves are stuffed with all sorts of new and fun decorations. Pretty soon, your'e setting out pumpkins and chrysanthemums on your porch steps, and thinking about turning your entryway into a door of doom.
Outside halloween decorations have become so popular that neighbors try to outdo one another with spooky yard props and transforming their ordinary houses and yards into haunted houses. Halloween is one holiday that doesn't require gift-giving, encourages costume-wearing and includes all ages.
Halloween Decorating Idea Gallery from World-Famous Roger's Gardens
Photo by Lisa Hallett Taylor
The world-famous Roger's Gardens in Orange County, California, conjures up a decorating feast for Halloween each year, centered around a theme. Take a look at three years of their beautiful and creative displays of fall plants, pumpkins, garden antiques and Halloween collectibles.
DIY Halloween Yard Haunt: Before and After
Photo © Dave Gugel
Halloween yard haunts have replaced full-size candy bars as the big draw in neighborhoods across the United States and other places that celebrate Halloween. Nobody knows this better than Dave Gugel, an extreme DIYer and former Disney designer who started transforming his home seven years ago for an annual Halloween party.
Watch as Gugel uses his do-it-yourself skills to transform his tract home into an amazing haunted house. Many pictures reveal before and after views of various projects, like a graveyard, pumpkin scarecrow, and the facade of his house.
Halloween Decorations That are More Flair Than Scare
Photo © Lisa Hallett Taylor
When it comes time to decorate for Halloween, not everyone goes for the gore. If your style is more elegant, eerie, retro, humorous or even cute, there's no reason to allow spewing monsters and worm-infested ghouls to scare you back into your house until after Halloween.
How to Make Floating Ghosts
Photo © Lisa H. Taylor
'Eerie Elegance' Author Shares Secrets for Halloween Party Decor
Photo courtesy of Eerie Elegance
Have you hit a 'dead end' when it comes to decorating your yard for Halloween? Britta Peterson, Webmistress of the Dark, guides you through Halloween prop design and party planning in her book, Eerie Elegance.
Learn her secrets for planning and putting on the perfect Halloween party.
Make an Easy Fall Wreath
Photo © Lisa Hallett Taylor
Follow the step-by-step instructions with photos to make this wreath in less than two hours.
What is a Home Haunt or Halloween Yard Haunt?
Photo © Talon Warlok
Home haunts are the Halloween version of winter holiday and Christmas decorations festooning doors, entryways, windows, porches and yards. Learn the evolution of the Halloween yard haunt and DIY haunted houses in this article which features insight from haunted house experts Lynne and Shawn Mitchell, authors of How to Haunt Your House.
How to Make Fake Moss for Halloween Props
Photo © Lynn
How do you get your Halloween yard props to stand out and look more authentic without having to buy genuine antique and weathered tombstones, statues, pedestals, pillars and columns? Those fake tombstones you buy or make -- usually from foam -- can get some instant aging by applying faux moss made from common, everyday clothes-dryer lint.
Authors and designers Lynne and Shawn Mitchell share their "recipe" for faux moss in this fun and easy step-by-step Halloween project.
