Zero Budget Halloween and Thanksgiving Decor

[just_lily]

I want to decorate our house for Halloween and Thanksgiving (I'm Canadian, so it is next weekend) but our budget is very tight until November. I need some ideas of things I can make with what we have just lying around the house.

I have a pretty stocked craft room and have most of the basics of construction paper, glue, fancy scissors, markers and crayons, glue gun, etc. We can also scrounge up things like leaves, sticks and pinecones. Closer to Halloween we will get some pumpkins (and take it out of the grocery budget!) and carve them up. Other than that, I am just short on ideas!

Kids' crafts would be great too, but I will probably end up doing them all myself because my kid is only 15months, and my oldest daycare kid is only 3.

Ideas?

[JamieCatheryn]

There's always the old trace a child's hand to make a paper turkey, glue on colorful paper or leaves for feathers. Paper pumpkins and squash would look nice. I found a wicker cornucopia (that horn-of-plenty thing) at the thrift store a while back for $2, if you store/display any unrefrigerated produce you have in one it makes a great decoration. Even without that, a nice basket,bowl, or tray of acorn squash, sweet potatoes, apples, whatever seasonal produce you'll actually eat, would be great to display.

Wax paper pressed leaves (iron leaves sandwiched between 2 sheets of wax paper) are great hung from the windows.

If you like the spooky Halloween stuff you could cut out bats and hang them from strings, make paper jack-o-lanterns, tissue paper ghosts maybe.

[Savoir Faire]

I've decorated with pecans in a mason jar. We also do things such as draw lots of Halloween/fall shapes and let the kids color them and tape them on the walls....

[almama]

One year I made a great project with "harvest colored" construction paper (red, brown, etc), glue, string and assorted beans, spices, seeds (on hand or from nature). It was really easy and I'm afraid my directions below will mess you up - so the big picture is that I folded the paper and on each piece wrote a letter of "Happy Thanksgiving" in glue, then sprinkled the seeds or spices or beans on the glue. I strung it up and hung it up and it was GREAT. It lasted 3 years too!!

I folded the paper so it came to a point (about 2/3 of the way down the paper, using the short edge), then folded the long sides back to the middle. The top (opposite the point) I folded about 2 inches. Then on each piece I wrote a letter in glue (e.g, "T" and "H") and then sprinkled some light object on it (lentils, spices, etc). After it dried, I spread out a length of yarn and put the letters in order with the top fold over the yarn, and taped the fold to the back. Voila!

If you have cement or a hard clay, another easy project to do is to take a flower pot and put a stick in that hard stuff. Then you decorate the stick (for Thanksgiving paper leaves with reasons to be thankful; for Halloween ghosts and witches). You might be able to do it with some tape and sand or rocks too.

[saoirse2007]

i am canadian as well
lots of fall leaves vines pinecones around
i have nothing stocked in my house...more than broke too
but we live near woods
if you are in the city try going to a nature park or golf course...anything with trees...and take a bag...lol

[Leenie]

My kids and I made some Halloween decorations yesterday out of old records. We painted the labels black to match the vinyl, and painted Jack Skellington on 2 of them, and a pumpkin on the other two and hung them from our eaves.

Last year we made some smiling black cat faces and put them on bright orange poster boards that we double sided taped to either side of the front door.

We also have (these have to be 5 years old) orange paper plates that we glued pumpkin faces onto, cut out of black construction paper, and we hang these in the kitchen. Have fun and be creative!