Eerie chic

Halloween decor is as plentiful as Christmas decor. Faux black cats, oversized bats, faux pumpkins, cobwebs, ghouls, and ghosts are affordable and adorable additions to your home during this time of year. There is no excuse to not have a little scary fun at home over the next few weeks!

Begin by draping cobwebs over everything in the foyer - mirrors, chairs, even the chandelier. Stand a black hat on the foyer table and hang a bat or two from the chandelier. Add a candelabrum filled with tall black-tapered candles on the table and stack a few pumpkins in the corner. Set a tattered corn broom next to the coat rack and hang a black witch or wizard's hat on the hook and you?ve got instant ?eerie chic?.

If your foyer table is usually home to a vase of fresh cut flowers, allow the last batch to simply die and dry out in the vase. Yes, it is chic to keep dead flowers on the table for this seasonal look. A vase of dead roses, sprayed black on a table in the entryway is outstanding and dreadfully fashionable for the last two weeks of October.

If you are hosting a party or having a few friends over for an evening of ghoulish fun, consider decorating, or rather undercoating, the living room and dining room. Purchase a bolt (about 30 yards long) of cheese cloth from your local fabric store and begin draping it over the living room and dining room furniture. Cut out a few holes on the cheesecloth to give it that ?moth-eaten? look. On the fireplace mantel, hang a picture of your favourite ghoul, monster, wizard or witch in an ornate gold frame. Inexpensive gilt frames are available at local department stores and the large poster-size pictures of your favourite monsters are available at poster shops. For a more personalized look, have a photograph taken of you dressed up as Elvira and then enlarge it to fill the frame. Place the picture above your fireplace and then drape the corner of your frame to the edge of the fireplace mantel with a faux cobweb. Beside the picture, add a vase of dried twigs that you picked from the bushes in your backyard. A light coating of black spray paint will make the twigs appear even eerier! As long as you are not planning on lighting the fireplace, insert a black caldron in the fire box and scatter bones amongst the ashes. 

Other scary ideas including placing a plastic mouse, snake or rat beside a table lamp or attaching silhouette cut-outs of cats or ghoulish figures in the windows ? the more the better! Replace light bulbs with amber, black or purple-coloured bulbs to cast an evil glow throughout the room. Remember to also put a stack of Halloween CDs in your music player - one of my favourites is Elvira's new CD which has a good assortment of catchy tunes.

Don't forget to decorate the powder room! Carve three tiny pumpkins each with a letter on them-the first a B then two 'O's to spell out the word BOO. Then, place each pumpkin on the back of the toilet or on the vanity. You can also fill a soap dish with tiny soaps shaped like cats, pumpkins or bats.  For some scary fun, weave a rubber snake around the toilet paper holder or dust the vanity mirror with cobwebs. You may even want to draw a crack on the mirror with a glass paint or a metallic silver felt pen (the ink will remove easily using a flat razor blade). On the back of the toilet tank, set a faux-stuffed cat. Hand towels printed or embroidered with Halloween motifs are readily and inexpensively available at home decor stores.

Halloween decor is great fun! This season, let the child in you come out!