Over the course of this month, I’ve been showing you the step-by-step process of creating my perfect Haunted House with goodies found at Kmart. Are you ready to see the frightful finished product and hear about my grand unveiling party?
Check out my video tour of our haunted house:
Haunted House Overview
Lights
We knew that to make our yard pop, we’d need a lot of lights. We strung a strand of 200 white dome LEDs over the driveway, with a charming skull as an accent! These LED lights are great because since they’re a neutral color, they can easily be reused for Christmas – or put in an upstairs room for track lighting, if you’re us!
I also set this grim reaper flaming head outside for the public unveiling. He’s actually not an outdoor decoration – something clearly marked on the package that I failed to read – however, he works as long as he’s set on a flat surface. I thought he’d be OK outside just for an hour to welcome guests to the party, and it worked like a charm.
We also had Marcus the Carcass, who sits in the grass by the driveway and gives a great illusion of being buried in the leaves.
For the front porch, we put up a black light strip under the eve and swapped out our regular porch light for a black light bulb to add a little florescent glow. We then hung up strands of red globe lights to give a creepy red atmosphere. (These, too, would be great to reuse at Christmas! Think ahead!)
We also ran a 12 foot purple rope light along the grass to illuminate the walkway up to the front door.
In the porch window, I hung up this garland of black fabric and purple lights which I love. This framed my spiderweb nicely!
We also had a pair of eerie eyes watching all those who came and went!
Accents
This “Creepy fabric” made a nice accent for our front door, along with a large Grim Reaper hanging ominously by the door and the giant spiderweb in the window!
Effects
Pepper’s Ghost was set up in our window to provide a 3-D illusion to haunt our guests – for the full explanation and how-to, click here. This got a lot of notice from our guests, who had never heard of this illusion and seemed pretty impressed by it.
Our scary flying ghostie is motion-activated and skulks along a braided cord, with optional haunted groans. We hung him up in the living room to give the appearance of floating by the window, and it also tied in (literally) to Pepper’s Ghost and gave a fun conversation piece for our guests, who congregated in the living room. My aunt in particular commented on how much she loved the ghost and thought it was so cute; it was also a hit with the one year old who kept running around the room!
Costumes
Jai picked out the pirate captain costume, and I thought he looked very dashing. The costume looked more elaborate than I expected!
I picked the witch costume and broke out the black lipgloss, drawing a spiderweb on my face with an eyeliner pencil. This whole look doesn’t even seem like a costume to me because I dressed just like this in my most heavily goth days (makeup and all). That was actually my inspiration for this costume – I wanted a dress I could wear again! 😀
Interactive Fun
Our little DIY photobooth consisted of a Halloween backdrop and black curtains, with an LED light strip hung overhead. I brought out the camera and tripod and snapped some fun pics of the guests who mugged for the camera!
Candy
I served these Crazy Bones suckers, and let me tell you, the little one went nuts for these (and us adults liked them too!) I was totally sold by the skeleton handles, which I totally saved and ran through the dishwasher to use as cupcake toppers later because that’s just the kind of frugal goth I am.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Beeb, didn’t you buy some “Good” candy too?” Yes, yes I did…and Jai and I ate it all before the party. Whoooooops. 😉 I will need to restock before Halloween so I have something for any little ghosts and goblins that come trick-or-treating – we pretty much never get trick or treaters because we live down a dark rural road with no sidewalks, but I’m hoping that since we’ve done up the yard so much, maybe some parents will park the cars so their kids can get out and stop by for tricks and treats. I practically have a neon sign in my yard saying “I have candy!” with all these decorations, so here’s hoping kids come so we don’t eat a second bag of candy by ourselves. 😉
We had 8 guests over for our little haunted house unveiling, and it was a great way to kick off the spooky season! Halloween is coming up fast, but there’s still time to pick up fun items at Kmart that you can put up with a minimal of fuss. Since my partygoers knew this endeavor was sponsored by Kmart, they kept asking, “But did THIS come from Kmart? But what about this?” And they were impressed/surprised to learn that every single piece came from there. Kmart truly had a spook-tacular variety of Halloween items, so go pick up some fun decorations for the yard and some bags of candy for the kiddos! (Or, um, yourself! ;))
If you’d like some simple last-minute inspiration to prepare for Halloween on Thursday, check out my ShopYourWay Catalog for details and pricing information on the ghoulish goods I picked up to created this display!
Have you decorated for Halloween yet?
