Navigate
X

Decorate your Toronto apartment for Halloween, on a budget

One of the biggest regrets most hosts have for holiday parties are expensive decorations that never see any use. They sit around collecting dust most of the year so that one special night they can be trucked out and impress everyone, but most of the time we kind of regret buying them. Cheap, charming decorations, while not as impressive as some of the more expensive ones, are still perfectly functional and satisfying, while not breaking anyone’s bank! Here are some fun and clever ideas to use this year to save time and money.

Milk Jug Jack ‘o Lanterns

Carving pumpkins is a time-honoured tradition for almost every household for Halloween, but A) It’s really messy, B) pumpkins are expensive and C) it’s a waste of a perfectly good, delicious pumpkin. Milk jugs are actually great for making a makeshift lantern because not only are they already the right colour (clear/white-ish – good for making ghosts!), cheap, easily recycled and glow brilliantly in dim light. Just grab a black sharpie and some scissors, cut out some spooky ghost-faces and go nuts!

Paper decorations

Sometimes all you need is effort to have a successful decoration, and making paper links with your friends is fun and an effective way to decorate your house. Instead of buying specific streaming decorations for too much money, making them yourself will always be more satisfying and cost-effective. Just get some friends, some black and orange paper, a glue stick and link some paper chains all around the house!

The Bloody Table Runner

Want something for that coffee table where the snacks and drinks are? Grab a large swath of gauze, some red paint and combine – fleck the paint all over the gauze to make fast, cheap and easy bloody bandages that you can put all around your house!

A Halloween Wreath

This one is a bit more complicated than the ones above, but similarly cheap and easy to make. Just take a regular Christmas wreath, take off the leaves and bows (all that Christmas-y stuff), spray paint it black or grey and then decorate with some hand-made Halloween mainstays! Cut out little felt black cats or paper ghosts. Maybe make a pipe-cleaner spider. Glue them all on and hang it on your front door. Easy!

 

All it takes is a bit of creativity and looking at everyday items a bit differently to have a successful – and cheap! – decorating session this Halloween.

Erin Cardone: Born on the Prairies, Erin Cardone grew up knowing there was more to life than canola fields and AAA Alberta Angus. So she escaped, living in Europe and Australia, white-knuckling it through plates of calf brains and raw horse meat, and learning languages she can't remember anymore. After a stint as a jaded, skeptical journalist, she changed tack and began writing rather awesome blogs and showing businesses that advertising is dead, so long live social media, with her businesses Legendary Social Media. She now splits her time between various Canadian cities, Costa Rica and wherever else the wind blows.