There are Giant Honkin’ Spiders in our Tree

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Not just because its a day where you’re encouraged to stuff your mouth with 400 pounds of Kit-Kats. But because you can go crazy with the decorations.

My kids are still pretty young and neither of them are really into scary stuff at all. But that’s the fun with Halloween. You can go super crazy scary, totally adorable or anything in between.

Last year, my wife decided to get super creative with decorations and make homemade ghosts and spiders. They came out pretty good but unfortunately it snowed a week or so before Halloween and all our hard work was pretty much destroyed. So we tried again this year.

For starters, we made a whole bunch of ghosts! They’re just white garbage bags stuffed with newspapers and tied off at the neck with string. Add some facial features with a Sharpie and you’re set.

Next up were the spiders. Bigger is better. Last year we put like eight eyes on each spider to be as close to realistic as possible. We also had the legs coming out of the head, which is accurate too. This year we went with legs out of the body, and only two eyes. Less accurate but better looking.

The spiders are made of a bunch of black garbage bags stuffed with newspapers. The legs are black garbage bags simply rolled up and taped to the bodies. The teeth are plastic cups cut to shape, while the bottom of the colored cups make up the eyes.

We made two spiders this year, one for the front stoop and the other to hang from a tree on our front lawn with all the ghosts. As we were hanging these suckers up, someone in our neighborhood was walking by and just gushing out how much she loved our decorations because “they’re homemade.”

And I couldn’t agree more. There’s just something about homemade things that adds a bit of fun, warmth and even a coolness factor to them. I hope we keep this up and add tons more new things every year as the boys get a bit older. Maybe witches or zombies next year?

 Do you decorate for Halloween?