This year, you’ll probably be stocked for Halloween with plenty of sweet treats. But is your front lawn prepared for the festivities? Have you given any thought to ghoulish decor, creepy props, and carved pumpkins? Your trick-or-treating days might be a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring some spooky Halloween spirit to your home. Here are five ways to thrill visitors and make your home stand out this October.
1. Project your fears.
Use a video projector and show a pack of zombies trying to break out of your living room windows. You can buy an all-in-one kit or a separate projector, USB memory drive, and projector screen film that clings to your windows, typically for less than $100.
2. Put a spooky face on your garage door.
This is an extremely inexpensive tactic, and you can switch out the face every year. Simply buy giant eyeballs, a foam core to create the rest of the face, some cheap paint, and velcro strips to attack it to your garage.
3. Create a music and light show.
You can easily transform your home into a haunted house with a Philips Hue starter kit and the right apps. Hue Halloween and Hue Haunted House are two great ones that combine haunting sounds and lighting effects. You can even download the Hue Sync app to sync your lights with your favorite Halloween songs.
4. Display your jack ‘o lanterns.
There’s nothing quite like hand carved pumpkins. However, don’t do a shoddy job with rushed artwork. Visit the hobby store and invest in some creative stencils and intricate designs. Try to carve your pumpkins within five days of Halloween, and preserve each one carefully. Rub the cut-out sections with petroleum jelly, spray them with lemon juice and water, and store them in the fridge (if you have room) when not on display.
5. Trap your visitors in cobwebs.
You could buy cheap cotton spider web stuff from the dollar store, but if you want to go the extra mile, hot glue webs are the answer. They’re easy to remove, and all you need is a special cobweb gun, hot glue sticks, and an air compressor. The added effort is worth it because the cobwebs looks so realistic.