Most people choose to use typical decorations like lights, pumpkins, spider webs and spooky music. Take these traditional decorations and add some creativity to make your house unique. Try to make different themes in each of the rooms. Be creative and even make a sign to go up on the wall. Two ideas for your rooms are the crawling pumpkin patch and Dracula’s lair.

Crawling pumpkin patch

Create this outside on your porch or deck. This will give your guests an idea of what’s to come once they get inside. Around your porch, hang lights and use orange, white and purple to give it a little twist. Spider webs are a must for a pumpkin patch so cover the outside in them. They can go into trees, around light posts and on the railing around your porch. Place pumpkins all around your yard. Get all different shapes and sizes to make it look like a real pumpkin patch. Have some fun: carve some of the pumpkins and put lights into them. Even put some of the pumpkins on your porch.

To make your pumpkin patch come to life, add some fog for a dramatic effect. Instead of purchasing a fog machine, try dry ice. With a fog machine you can, usually, only have it coming from one spot. However, with dry ice you can put it in multiple spots for a more eerie effect. While wearing protective gloves, break up the dry ice into chunks. Place the chunks into buckets and pour in hot water. The dry ice will start to evaporate and you will have instant fog. When the water gets cooler the fog will stop, so you may need to replace the water and add more dry ice throughout the night.

What would a party be without some fan-favorite games? Set up a long table on the porch. To play everyone’s favorite drinking games, get orange and black plastic cups and a couple of ping-pong balls. Take the ping-pong balls and permanent markers and draw on them to make them look like eyeballs. This will enhance the eerie feel of the crawling pumpkin patch.

Dracula’s lair

Now that your guests know what to expect, when they go inside they wont be surprised to see Dracula’s lair. To keep a similarity between outside and inside, continue the spider webs. Hang them on the walls, ceiling, and furniture. One simple and easy step to change the mood to a more vampire feel is to take out the light blubs in the ceiling. Replace them with a black light or put in a red light for a more dramatic effect.

Inside is where you will want to set up your drink and hors d’oeuvre table. Place another long table along the side of the room. Make the table look like Dracula’s dinner table by putting a white tablecloth on it. With craft glue and red food coloring, mix the two in a bowl and then drip it onto the table to resemble blood.

On the table, also place a vase of black roses. Go to the craft store and either purchase black roses or get regular roses and spray paint them black. Then get white and red candle sticks and place them around the table. To give the candles an older look, take a black permanent marker and draw faint, small vertical lines to make them look cracked.

The number one thing to remember is to have fun while decorating. Get some basic items that you like, and base the rest of the room off of them.

Contact Taylor Parks at [email protected].