Prepare Your House for The Festival of Ghosts and Witches

By Mamnun Ahmed Nihal

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Halloween, one of the trendiest festivals around the world but still mildly celebrated in our country; mostly reveled in premium hotels and big shopping malls. Some costume parties are also arranged. But we seldom see this party being arranged among the households, and I think this festival will surely go with our culture as we Bengalis are drawn to spooky things and we already have costume parties (যেমন খুশি তেমন সাজো) in our yearly school programs. The comic-con ordeal has already gained fame, the young generation love little pranks and who doesn’t like some chocolate treats? So, we can see that we are already equipped to celebrate this festival, all we need is some direction and action. Here, we will talk about how to prepare your house for Halloween with some easy DIY ideas.

Some Basic Ideas to Know for Matching with Theme

To understand the theme, you will need to know these basic ideas:

1. The main colors of this theme are orange, black, and red.
2. Carved pumpkins (real or handmade), also called Jack-o’-lanterns which look like a spooky face, are widely used as a primary décor of this festival.
3. Kids go door to door to ‘trick or treat’, which means they will perform a small trick for treats like chocolate or cookies. So it is important to have some treats for the kids. People also leave chocolates near their door in a decorated spooky candy jar.
4. For a home party, costume parties are most common where people put on mostly scary costumes to match the theme.
5. Foods are also decorated to match with this spooky theme.
6. A scary playlist will boost the chilling mood around the house.
7. Jars are also customary décor items, as it is presumed that witches use potions from the jars to make curses.
8. Flowers like Sunflower, Tulip, and yellow Allamanda are used to make it more natural.
9. DIY candles are a very good touch for enhancing the theme.

Items That Will be Needed for Making DIY Decorations

As Halloween has not been that popular in our country, we need to make the décor items on our own. For making, we will need these items:

1. Matte black and orange color spray paints
2. Scotch tape (transparent or colored according to need)
3. Old unused paints
4. Different kinds of papers
5. Glues
6. Balloons
7. Ribbons
8. Old Jars
9. Brooms
10.  Fallen tree branches
11.  Shopping and Grocery Bags
12.  Plastic Bottles
13. Other rarely used household Items
14.  Knife and Scissor

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Making a Carved Pumpkin

You can definitely buy a pumpkin from the market and cut or drill it into different designs. You can also buy many different shaped pumpkins from the market. But I will show you one very easy way to make a DIY pumpkin with balloons.

DIY 1

At first, you will need to blow a balloon, not fully, then you have to put 2 or three rubber bands or ribbons into the balloon then blow the balloon again. After that, you need to put papers on the balloon with glue so that it covers the whole balloon. Finally, paint the balloon with the color of your choice (orange is preferable).

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Pictures of how to make a Jack-o’-lantern (credit: 5 minutes craft)

Designing Jars and Lanterns

We as Bengalis, have so many unused jars in our home. All we need are some painst, a brush, and glowing lights. We can also use bandage or cheese clothes and markers for mummy-shaped jars.

DIY 2

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You can turn your existing lanterns into candy lanterns just by putting candies in it, also you can make paper lanterns according to your ideas.

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Preparing the candles

You can prepare your candles for the theme in many ways. You can paint on the candles or use two different colored candles, one melted on the other.

DIY 3

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The Stairs

Stairs are the first thing the guests and other people are going to notice. Thus, to create a good initial impression, stair decoration is crucial. You can decorate your stairs in many ways, but my preference would be a combination of carved pumpkins and flowers.

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You can also put fairy lights on stair handles and put scary bat stickers on the wall beside the stairs.

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The Entrance

People put the most effort into the entrance because most interactions are going to happen there. You can even redraft your doormat by just printing a stencil and dabbing on a coat of black paint. A funny message on the mat can be added too.

DIY 4

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The door is where you can show your creativity the most. A simple scary face with papers will do too but you can also make spider webs with ribbons and put a handmade or store-bought spider beside it.

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You can make creative spooky door designs according to your door color.

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Now here is a DIY that will help you make a Jack-o-Lantern shaped entrance door. You’ll need a Black plastic table cover, orange plastic table cover, multicolor stretch spider webs.

DIY 5

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With some brooms and papers, you can create a magical broom’s coat hanger just in front of the entrance door.

DIY 6

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You don’t necessarily have to decorate all the rooms in your house. Living room and dining room decoration will do just fine as guests will mostly be roaming around these rooms.

The Rooms

Rooms must be full of scary lanterns, scary pumpkins, bats flying on the walls, and spider webs on the corners. Scary candles will enhance the mood too.

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DIY 7

Furniture can be covered with white cloth to make them look like white ghosts.

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You can also decorate your bedroom for a scary environment to binge horror movies.

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Dining Decoration can differ from minimalistic to aggressive. You can only put a pumpkin in the middle of the dining table and be done with it or put all kinds of décor on the dining table.

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Foods

With a scary table comes scary food. Many creative Halloween recipes can be made if you want to make your Halloween party a little bit more interesting and can enhance the theme too. Halloween foods are mostly focused on dessert items.

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DIY 8

With eggs, you can easily make this recipe called ‘devilled eggs’ by just cutting the yolk and spraying some chili powder on it or make a spider shape with black olives

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DIY 9

We can even decorate our beverage bottles with cloth and papers and make it look scary too.

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The Walls

The color or the decoration of the wall will determine the theme of the whole house. Here painting can be an expensive option. I will recommend Berger Easy Paints for this with the color of your choice (Orange, Red, and Black are recommended). If you want to go for a cheaper option you can decorate your walls with wallpapers and stickers, that might hamper your previous paints on the wall. A silhouette scenario with only black papers will create a great theme.

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DIY 10

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The windows and curtains

The windows which can be seen from the outside of the house should be decorated too so that people passing by will get a vibe of this celebration too. With red paints, a ‘drops of blood coming down from the window’ scenario can be created.

DIY 11

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DIY ghosts can be good additions too, to make them all you will need is net bags or cheesecloths, a spray bottle, liquid starch, a wire hanger, a Styrofoam ball, and a stand (like the coke liter bottle).

DIY 12

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As for the curtains, I would highly suggest using cheap net orange or blue colored net curtains that are usually being used for wedding programs.

DIY 13

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The Playlist

A chilling playlist containing songs that go with the Halloween theme is required for the party. Here is a list of songs that might help you to create your playlist.

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I hope I have been able to provide you with the key ideas you need to know about decorating your house before throwing a Halloween party at your home. Now everything is on your hands, to trick or treat your guests and neighbors. Happy Halloween!