Recycling Halloween decorations
September 11th 2008
The key to recycling Halloween decorations comes when decorate in the first place. You can get your children involved for several weekends before Halloween or even during the last months of summer making paper cutout and colored decorations. If done properly these can be used for years to come. Each year they are used the year can be written on the back of them.
Another great way to have decorations that are reusable is to use old clothing to make things like Scarecrows or witches in the yard or windows of the house. A witch on the garage roof is a great decoration and the old clothes can be used again for other holidays until they are completely worn out.
Some families buy plastic pumpkins so they can reuse them over and over. Our family has a stock of small plastic pumpkins for window decorations but for the main pumpkin and the front porch we must have the real thing.
One decoration that is often over looked is dried leaves. Put them all over the driveway and side walks. It gives the house an abandoned look , feel and sound. As the kids walk up the crunch driveway have scary music come on and lights initiated by motion sensors to scare the heck out of them, albeit gently. You will find solar powered motion sensor security lights at the home improvement center that require no wiring and that are much less expensive than you would imagine.
It's a great decoration to have everything totally dark around the outside of the house but only have one light burning inside a big candle on the porch. The kids just don't know if they should come up or not. A big black light painted sign can say , come in but they will be cautious until the lights come on and scare them a bit.
The more decorations you make your self the more you can use next year. All you need do is put them in different places each year and they will seem like new.
You can also use fall harvest decoration items like old corn stalks, dried out corn cobs, and old wheel barrows turned upside down. Anything from the garage that looks old looks great and spooky on Halloween night.
An old sheet with eyes painted on it can swing in the breeze if you have a large tree in your yard. Sound that seems to come from out of now where it is a very surprising decoration. Recorded thumps and pops, squeaks and cat calls add extra dimension to your decorations as well.
Note that almost all of the things we have suggested you use are either old and useable again or natural organic products of fall. Use your imagination and get the kids involved in coming up with items to use this year that can be easily saved and used again next Halloween.