I love holidays, because they give us an easy excuse to celebrate, to imagine, to play. After Christmas, my favorite holiday is Halloween because we get to play and be crafty (in a good way). Every year, we decorate the house inside and out, to the amusement of neighbors and trick-or-treaters alike. Halloween has many styles: gory, gothic, cute, whimsical. Ours is more of a whimsical gothic or spooky whimsical style. We are not interested in staging murderous scenes, so there is no blood and gore in our decor. (Cheesey rhyme, I know.) There is not a single homage to axe murderers or evil spirits. Instead, we like to create a little mystery, a hint of an other-worldly something in the air, in itself an experience a little magical. We use suggestion - an approach more subtle and deliciously goose bump raising - through scent, sight and sound. Fog rolling across the lawn. A light flickering behind a window. Something filmy staring out into the night. Trees grimacing at the sights. Spooky music escaping from the house. The scent of roasting pumpkin seeds dancing in the air. Creepies and crawlies, silhouettes and dazzling pumpkins frolicking inside.
This month, I will share some of my favorite Halloween ideas from the web, starting with a glimpse of those we used at home.
graves: leaf piles, black-painted faux pumpkins with flickering battery-powered votives
poster-board silhouette
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