Easy and Quick Halloween Decorations
Halloween is an exciting holiday for children and an excuse to spruce up the house with a fall theme that includes some bright orange and spooky black.
Window Decorations
Plastic canvas is sold in hobby stores for needlepoint projects. It's stiff and can be cut into shapes. The holes are large so it takes seconds to stitch. Use a Magic Marker to draw shapes onto it, then fill in with yarn stitches and cut out. Make pumpkins to hang in the window, or cut 4 pumpkin shapes and stitch together at the edges to create a box for a centerpiece. Each side is stitched with orange, black and green (for the stem) and the center can be filled with a plant or dried branches.
Pipe Cleaner Tree
Make a Halloween tree with black pipe cleaners. Insert several pipe cleaners into a florist's block for the base. Then wrap more pipe cleaners around the upright cleaners to create a bent and knurled trunk. Make branches by attaching and twisting pipe cleaners into different shapes. Wrap small bundles of candy in orange fabric or napkins and tie with orange ribbons to hang from the branches.
Fall Centerpiece
Cover the center of your table with leaves and place a decorated pumpkin in the center. Make a family of 3 size pumpkins each decorated accordingly with black markers. Add curly ribbon hair to the top of one, glue bushy yarn eyebrows to another or use sequins, beads, buttons and other odds and ends for your creations.
Creative Candle holders
Group tiny pumpkins together as candle holders. Cut a hole in the top of each, large enough to insert a candle. Line them up on the windowsill. No pumpkin carving needed.
Ribbon Pumpkin
For an elegant centerpiece begin with a large Styrofoam ball. Cut strips of different shades of orange ribbon long enough to wrap from the top to the bottom of the ball. Attach one end with a pin into the top of the Styrofoam and bring the other end to the opposite side. Attach with another pin. Continue to wrap the ball in this way with alternating shades of color. Cut felt leaves and a stem and attach to the top of the pumpkin with pins. Or, use ribbon that can be curled by firmly drawing it over a scissors to make a clump of green for the top. Curl ribbon over a pencil and attach for trailing veins. If you can't find a large enough Styrofoam ball make several small pumpkins.
15-Minute Decoration
Weave orange and black ribbons through a loose-reed basket and fill with corn candy. Tie the handle with a large crepe paper bow and set it in a visible place.
Copyright Leslie Linsley, author
Reprinted with permission, HouseNet, Inc.