My Haunted House!

Although Halloween is over (nooooooooo!) I promised photos from my Halloween party, which I had after-the-fact on Saturday (best decision ever, because as soon as November hits all of the Halloween stores slash prices!!). So since I promised I guess I will just have to do one more Halloween post!! And then I promise this is it, and I will move on to the less gruesome holidays fast approaching :).

So to decorate my house (ok, apartment) for Halloween I decided on 3 themes, yes 3, because 1 is boring! First in my living room which is the first room you walk into I went with overall dark palette and what ended up to be a mash-up of Black Forest/traditional haunted house/seance room. I know that doesn't seem like it should count as a "theme" but it worked! Check it out:

Lights on

Lights off!

Another room shot. I including our animatronic spider in this one. He dropped down suddenly in response to noise so we placed him on the overhang right in front of our front door for a quick scare right when guests walked in. And we did get a couple people! 

Seance table!! The Crystal ball is a large glass dome shade I bought for a dollar at Goodwill. It is illuminated by a simple push on light from the dollar store! The tea lights are led and also from the dollar store. I placed these is 4 glass jars from goodwill. And the cards are from a deck I got as a souvenir at Harry Potter world in Universal Studios.

I had this vintage bird cage which looked creepy on its own, so I hang it from our overhang and added some dollar store crows for extra creepiness!

I utilized our fireplace by putting a large fuzzy spider in the fireplace and lighting it with a white strobe (the effect was ally cool with the low light we had for the party. Then for the tile in front of the fireplace I laid some tattered green mesh from the Halloween store and some plastic rats and snakes!

This was one of my favorite areas! I got the frames from goodwill, and printed the creepy old photos offline from thegraphicsfairy.com. Then I added two led candlesticks placed inside a couple of my vintage baby cups. Some black roses and spiderwebs finished the look!

Here is another vignette I created by simply opening a couple of reference books I already had to creepy diagrams and then added cobwebs and spiders!

This was supposed to be our big scare but unfortunately it decided to stop working the night of the party (it totally works again now!) I got this animatronic snake that strikes, hisses, and rattles its tail when someone passes by too close from the Halloween store half off!!

Creepy filter!

The second area I decked out for our party was the kitchen. For the kitchen it seemed only natural to go with a mad scientist theme!:

the Laboratory! 

Again with the filters!

View to the living room.

I made a number of "specimen" jars with some of my old canning jars I have picked up at thrift stores. Simply add water, mix in some food coloring to the desired color, and add some plastic props like creepy bugs!

The laboratory was also a candy bar! Because what is more Halloween than candy?! I used different containers, some new and some thrifted to serve different kinds of candy. I only used thrifted items like the metal stand and tray for wrapped candy, and placed unwrapped candy like twizzlers and of course candy corn in some new (but still inexpensive) glass jars and containers.

Plastic eyeballs filled another jar, and the large faux mercury glass urn from homegoods held fun size kit kat and crunch bars left over from tricker-or-treaters!

This was definitely the creepiest jar! I got the fake fingers from the Halloween store half-off!

I found this rounded bottom jar at Goodwill and immediately thought dome. I used an embroidery needle stuck into a piece of foam as a mount for my plastic fly. Then I placed that on a glass saucer with the dome over it. 

The last area I decorated was the patio. This was definitely my favorite:

Blacklight!! I got at blacklight bulb that I used in one of our floor lamps and a long light that could be mounted to the wall. Then it was glow-in-the-dark craziness! I pretty much bought everything I saw that said glow-in-the-dark, from the two faces (I actually made these!), to g-i-t-d plastic spiders and bats, and even g-i-t-d duck tape! 

I also got black-light paint from the Halloween store that I used to make creepy signs on foam core with sayings like "Help Me" and "Your Next". I even got a little artistic with it like the dripping painting on the top right. 

I made the faces with felt cut-outs from the dollar store by glueing them onto foam core that I had sprayed with glow-in-the-dark spray paint!. 

Well, I guess that is all for Halloween this year! Now it's time to start planning for next year! Muahhahaha! 

Thanks for stopping by, 

-Liz :)

4 Easy Dollar Store Halloween Decorations

Since it is apparent I am OBSESSED with the dollar store I am going to continue bombarding everyone with dollar store Halloween awesomeness! (there can never really be too much halloween awesomeness can there?... I think not!) So here are 4 ridiculously cheap and simple decorating ideas I came up with using mainly materials that can be found at, you guessed it... the $ Store!:

1. 

For this first project I used this glass candlesticks from Dollar Tree:

I gave them a quick spray of Rustoleum brand Chalkboard spray paint (its actually kind of hard to tell when all of the area is covered since these are see-through, so a couple coats is a good idea), and then used chalk to highlight all of the edges :). 

2. 

Who says Jack-o-lanterns can only come in pumpkin form??! I decided to add a little halloween whimsy to my living room lampshade by cutting out a set of eyes and a funny mouth from construction paper I purchased at the dollar store. Then just adhere with some double stick tape! 

Here's what it looks like when the light is off.

Wide angle.

You could go as simple or elaborate as you wanted with this, using an craft knife to cut out more complicated patterns! 

3. 

For this project I used two kinds of plastic glow-in-the-dark bats:

The ones on the left are from Target (the dollar section, so it counts!!) and the ones on the right are from Dollar Tree. I got two packs of 6 from Target and one pack of 6 from Dollar Tree so 18 bats in all! 

First, I used a standard hole punch to punch a hole at the top of each wing on every bat. Then using fluorescent green twine, I cut equal pieces to connect the bats together and tied off the ends through the holes in the wings. 

I hung the finished product on my patio using small command hooks!

Close-up!

Sadly, I could not get a picture of how they glow with my camera :( but I promise they look cool! And I plan on replacing my patio lights with black lights for our potential Halloween party to amplify the effect!

4. 

For my last project I used only one common household item that can be purchased at any dollar store, contact paper! 

First I printed a template offline and traced my ghost shape onto the backside of the contact paper (the paper part you peel off). Like so:

Then I simply cut out my ghost, using an Xacto knife for the eyes and mouth :). 

Last peel and stick! Here are a few different angles to see these better (I love how these look in person, but they sure are tricking to photograph!):

These could be used on any glass surface: mirror, windows, or on the glass of picture frames to add a little subtle spookiness! 

I hope you enjoyed my dollar store concoctions! 

Thanks for stopping by!

-Liz :)