Halloween Yard Decorations: How We Do Halloween at Our House

Halloween is a big deal at our house, and it has been for a long time. We did it big at the townhouse, probably since 2010 or earlier, and then we moved to the Creek House, got a bigger yard, and it just got bigger. That’s how this works. You give a woman more lawn, she buys more headstones.

It starts with the haul. Earlier this month I pulled the Halloween stuff out of the storage unit down the street, and the rest comes up out of the crawl space. (New bins are on the list, so it can all live in the crawl space eventually.) Zach helps me pull everything out and stage it. After that, the actual decorating is all me.

And every year, I add a little. This year it was a few things from the dollar store and Walmart, plus a dozen battery-powered flickering pillar candles from Dollar General that went out among the headstones tonight. Every year I add a few more headstones, too. At this point the graveyard is less of a decoration and more of a growing community.

My favorite piece is the circle of ghosts standing around the “fire.” They’re store-bought, and this is their last year. The wind kept blowing the fabric off and leaving bare Styrofoam heads standing around the fire. Next year I’m making my own, with proper fabric circles and fishing weights sewn in to keep them “dressed.”

Two photos side by side: a circle of white ghosts on shepherd's hooks in the front yard, then the same ghosts after the wind, one down to a bare Styrofoam head and another's sheet lying in the leaves.

The worst part, hands down, is the black drape “spiderweb” and the spiders that go up on the walls. Ladders don’t like mulch or dirt, and I’m short. It always takes more effort than I remember from the year before. But the result is worth it, every single time.

And the skeleton on the garage roof I was debating? It’s happening, just not this year. I’m buying a couple on deep discount after Halloween, so next year the garage finally gets in on it.

As for the trick-or-treaters, as of 7:40 tonight we’d had about a dozen kids, nine grown-ups, and two dogs. We also met our new neighbors across the street, who set up a firepit, a candy bowl, and some music on their side of the cul-de-sac. Their dog, Gumbo, and Remy now have a play date on the books. The candy, the stickers, and the Greenies get their own post.

Here’s the graveyard, candles and ghosts and all.