When I was a kid, my mom always decorated our house for every holiday, and it was so much fun! But as an adult, I found that the only holiday I really took the time to decorate for was Christmas – and even then I would only put out about half of my decorations. But now that I have kids, I am going to make a much more concerted effort to decorate for the major holidays to help them, and me, get into the spirit!
I decided to start with one room of the house for Halloween – baby steps! So the kitchen got Halloween’ed (yep, I’m going to make that a word) with some simply but spooky and fun decor.
Here’s a quick tour of our spooky kitchen, starting with the kitchen table. I found those fun spider webs at Joann Fabric. Rather than using them as placemats, as they are intended, I placed three together to create a table runner under my votive holder.
As you can see, the sideboard along the wall behind our table also got Halloween’ed. Here’s a closer look.
I just adore these blue mercury glass pumpkins that I found this year, also at Joann (made even better by a 50% off coupon!). We have some navy blue accents throughout our kitchen, so these awesome pumpkins really help to bring in a Halloween flare that fits with the existing colors of the kitchen. I think they’ll also transition well as part of our Thanksgiving decor next month.
The ghost candle holder that sits in front of the pumpkins is one that I’ve had for years. I like displaying items in odd numbered groupings, so the ghost paired with the two pumpkins creates a great little display.
The silver candle holders are typically in our master bathroom, but with the addition of square black candles, they provide the height that the sideboard display really needed.
The skeleton candle holder I’ve also had for years. In the past, it sat alone on a table and the scale was just too small. But this year, as part of the overall sideboard display, it has much more impact.
I should also mention that grey fabric at the base of the sideboard display. I picked it up for just a few dollars at Target this season. They called it “Spooky Fabric”, and it’s really just a loosely woven, mesh-like fabric that can be easily stretched and bunched to create a variety of different looks. I think works well on the sideboard by taking the individual display items and making them feel part of one cohesive design.
Years ago, when I lived in a condo downtown, I bought a great black feather wreath to hang around a round mirror during Halloween season. But since moving to our current home, I hadn’t found a good place to display this wreath. This year, since the Halloween decor in the kitchen was coming together in a primarily black and white theme, I decided the wreath would be a good addition hung adjacent to the kitchen table.
The ghosts did, in fact, glow in the dark when I purchased them a few weeks ago, but, unfortunately, they seemed to have already stopped glowing at night. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since they only cost $1 each.
However, from the outside of our house, when the lights are on in the kitchen at night, the ghosts still show up in the window. Next year, though, I think I’ll try giving each ghost a quick coat of glow-in-the-dark spray paint to see if we can amp up the effect.
In fact, Scott and I are have decided that when the boys are a bit older (as in, when Cooper is old enough to eat actual food ;), we’d like to start a new tradition of having a “Spooky Dinner” during the week leading up to Halloween. We envision that the Spooky Dinner will, of course, include the candles and spooky decor, but also a themed menu – maybe with items like this, or this, or this {thanks Pinterest}.
In case you missed it last week, I also did a little Halloween decorating on our front porch, including hanging a wreath that I painted when I was 15. Click here to check out that wreath in all of it’s mid-1990’s glory (splatter paint and all)!
