Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but this year life kept me too busy to decorate early. I finally managed to pull everything together at the last minute! Take a quick peek at my Halloween decoration tour below—I’ll go into more detail about my setup after the video.
I woke up early on Halloween and headed to Lefty’s for an egg sandwich breakfast (Shameless plug for my favorite – and in my opinion the only decent bagels in/around Saint Louis!). When I got home, I jumped straight into decorating. Most decorations were already up, but nothing was powered yet. The wind and rain had really beaten up the graveyard.
Power struggles
We have an outlet on the side of the house, but it’s unreliable. When it works, it only stays on for a few minutes before cutting out again. It’s not a GFCI trip—I can’t reset it to keep it running. To fix it, I ran power from a bedroom window instead. That handled the house uplighting, skeleton uplighting, and the three new dancing ghosts. The remaining lights and props ran through a Light-O-Rama controller.
Destruction as a solution
The main roofline is lined with pixel lights, though bad weather knocked half of them down. I haven’t had time to fix them yet. Next year, I need a better mounting system that makes setup and removal easier. I hung a few hundred orange lights from the corner of the house to the skeleton’s hands and matched the pixels to the same color. The result was a 15-foot skeleton pulling glowing strands from the house. I even made the lights flicker and blink randomly for extra drama.
New Kids on the Block
One new feature this year was the set of dancing ghosts from Sam’s Club. They’re adorable—three connected ghosts that dance together. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to trigger them without an input, but once powered, they danced and sang nonstop. I like playing Halloween music, so I wanted to silence their song. With no volume control, I wrapped foam around the speaker to muffle it. It wasn’t perfect but worked well enough. Next year, I might open it up and disconnect the speaker completely.
An Arm and a Leg
Skeletons are easy to find and affordable—under $40 if you don’t need them fully articulated. I grab a few new ones each year. They’re usually the stars of my display, but this time I used only three: one by the mailbox, one in a rocking chair, and another climbing a nearby tree.
Doubles as a fun photo-op
I’ve seen tons of ads for garage-door covers with spooky Halloween scenes. Many looked suspicious, but Amazon offered some good, inexpensive ones. I bought two and loved how they turned out. The garage often gets ignored in my displays, so this was a fun upgrade. The trick is to secure the top first, then close the door and pull the cover tight. Once attached, the door still opens and closes smoothly.
Which witch is which?
Beside the driveway, there’s a stump where we cut down a dying tree. It was surrounded with mulch, so I set up an old witch decoration. Around the base, I stacked firewood and a few skulls. A “fire” projector cast red, flickering light to create a glowing fire effect.
New structures and FX
We helped friends decorate their truck for a local Trunk-or-Treat. The theme was Harry Potter, so I made props from foam. Using a simple foam cutter, I shaped wooden-style signs, sealed them with Mod Podge, and finished them with wood stain for a realistic touch. I loved how they turned out and plan to experiment more with foam next year.
Other highlights included our blinking Beware sign and a graveyard with skeleton arms reaching from the ground. I didn’t have time to set up the projector or sync lights to music this year, but maybe I’ll start early for next Halloween!