The real season of holiday home décor has just begun. The next few months will bring several holidays — along with the pressure to make your home fit the look of the season. Do not wear yourself out now! Celebrate the holiday by giving your house simple Halloween highlights with these ideas.

Decorate for the Season, Not Just the Holiday

  • Place a few large pumpkins on the porch, along with a sitting scarecrow. Make one into a jack-o-lantern. Simply discard the jack-o-lantern after Halloween and leave the rest during the month of November.
     
  • Put pie pumpkins on bookshelves.
     
  • Use small pumpkins, gourds, and colored corn in a clay bowl or crock as a dining room table centerpiece.
     
  • Hang a generic wreath (grapevine wreaths work great) on your front door and simply add and take away seasonal decorations as needed. Insert fake leaves and miniature plastic pumpkins (found in craft section of stores) in a few spots around the wreath. For a real spooky look, add a few plastic spiders and a few inches of pulled-apart white stuffing or cotton across the diameter of the wreath as a spider web. When Halloween is over, remove the spiders and the web and leave the pumpkins and leaves.

Use Halloween Accessories as Accents

  • Hang jack-o-lantern buckets (the kind children use for collecting candy) on bedroom doorknobs. They can also be used in children's bedrooms for their own decoration.
     
  • Set miniature scarecrows on level surfaces around the house. Good places are steps, fireplace mantles, or on high shelves to keep them away from small hands.
     
  • Hang a child's costume mask on the front door.

Use Clear Containers to Show Off the Treats and the Signs of the Season and Holiday

  • Small, clear jars filled with candy corn or candy pumpkins add a burst of seasonal color to any room.
     
  • Large jars, vases, or baskets filled with large nuts (in the shell), bright leaves, pine cones, and acorns can be used on deep window shelves or as centerpieces.

Display Your Child's Artwork

  • Let toddlers and preschoolers finger paint or brush paint with orange, yellow, and black. When dry, cut the art to fit in a picture frame and hang on the wall in their room or other places around your house. Provide your children with simple materials to make crafts at home. Ideas and patterns can be found on DLTK's Halloween craft page.
     
  • For children in school, use the seasonal and holiday-themed artwork and crafts coming home from art class and homeroom as décor.
     
  • Have children decorate a small pumpkin with small paintbrushes and paint. These can be used as bookends or simple Halloween accents in any room.

Use Books

  • Pull out hardback mysteries, suspense novels, and any children's Halloween books you have and set them upright and slightly open on shelves (the way librarians often display them in the library) in your living room or den.
     
  • Rest seasonal paperback books against the stair banister, one on each step so that the book cover shows.