DIY Halloween decorations the kids can make

With Halloween around the corner, it’s time to get creative and make some spooky decorations for your house and garden. Halloween may be a little different in areas with COVID restrictions in place, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a fang-tastic time by making your house as spooky as possible! We’ve put together some DIY decorations you can make at home – a perfect opportunity to have some fun with the kids.

Pumpkins

Pumpkins are traditionally carved into spooky faces at Halloween, but don’t restrict yourself to tradition. There are lots of other ways you can decorate a pumpkin, so let your imagination go wild.

• Painting pumpkins is great fun, and your children can choose their favourite colours. Once they’ve dried, splatter them with paint that has been thinned down slightly with water. Then coat a paintbrush or old toothbrush with the paint mixture and tap it repeatedly over the painted pumpkin to create a fabulous look.
• Kids can also have fun decorating their painted pumpkins with pompoms and other decorations stuck on with craft glue. They also look gorgeous with glittery stems, so dip those pumpkin stems into runny glue and sprinkle glitter all over them. You may need to have a look at our tips for removing those craft stains, in case the kids get a little over-excited and something ends up on the carpet (it happens!).
• Another option is to cover a pumpkin with Halloween-themed duct tape. Look for tape with spiders or webs and then stick googly eyes onto the pumpkin for the finishing touch.
  

Lolly boxes

This is a fun one to make in preparation for Halloween. You can either create one large box for the lollies at home, or you can create individual bags for when your kiddies, (sorry, your little witches and wizards) do their trick or treating rounds of the neighbourhood.

• For your home lolly bowl, paint an empty box, then stick decorations on it once it’s dry. For example, to create a black cat bowl, paint the empty box black, then paint 4 toilet roll cores to use as the legs. Next, cut a tail shape out of cardboard, then cut out cat-shaped eyes and ears. Paint these black, and once it’s dry, stick it all together. You can paint a little white nose and some whiskers too, or use white or silver pipe cleaners for the whiskers. Then fill your new sweet bowl with your favourite lollies and wait for the doorbell to ring!
• If you want to do individual boxes or bags, then buy what’s called ‘lolly/treat boxes’ or little paper bags, and decorate them. Make the box into a haunted house, using ghost figures and dark windows and a door. Or create a scary paper bag monster. Start by painting the bag whatever colour you want your monster to be, then find some paper or cardboards and cut out large teeth and 3 eyes, a long tongue and some pointy ears. When the paint is dry, stick on all the accessories.

Decorations

Garlands and table decorations are a nice easy way to give your house and garden some festive Halloween spirit.

• Light-up ‘cats eyes garland’. Start by helping your kids cut out purr-fect cat faces. Use a hole puncher to punch out holes in each shape for the eyes, then slide string lights into the holes and hang them where they can be plugged into the wall. (If you don’t have string lights, you can thread shapes on string, such as black cats, spiders, ghosts, bats, and anything spooky.)
• Leaf ghosts. Send the kids outside to hunt for fallen leaves, then get them to paint them white. Once these are dry they can either paint, or use a black marker and draw on little black eyes. These can be scattered onto the table or string them together for a spooktacular garland.

Treats

There are so many fun Halloween-themed cooking activities, and so much fun to be had in the kitchen. A word to the wise though: don’t get started too early in the week, as your kids will want to eat all their goodies and there’ll be nothing left for Halloween.

• Spider biscuits. Use Oreos as the body, pretzel pieces as the 8 legs, white mini marshmallows as the eyes, and chocolate chips for the middle. Make some ‘glue’ by mixing icing sugar with a little water and let the kids get creative!
• Spooky lollypops. Use round, wrapped lollypops (such as Chupa Chups) and cover them with a square of white fabric or tissues. If you use tissues, you may need a few, so the colour of the wrapper doesn’t show through. Bunch up the white fabric over the lollypop and place a little elastic band over it to keep in on. Use a black marker to make the little eyes and then tie some orange and black ribbon over the elastic band and tie it into a bow around the ‘neck’ of the ghost.
• Halloween shaped biscuits. What will it be? Ghosts? Bats? Pumpkins? Baking and icing different shaped biscuits is so much fun for all ages. And they’ll be a hit with the neighbourhood kids (and much appreciated by any grown up neighbours too no doubt.)

There are a million different ideas out there for Halloween decorations and baking, and we’re sure your children will have lots of ideas too! Halloween is so much fun. That is, of course, except for the inevitable chocolate hangover, and perhaps a few chocolate stains on the carpet. On that note, here are some stain removal tips for chocolate that may come in handy afterwards.

Enjoy!