Halloween in college is a subtly limited affair for some.
Unlimited free candy is no longer on the horizon, and decorating is often limited to hanging a wreath made of fake decaying leaves or a printed picture of a ghost on the door of your dorm room.
While “Halloweekend” for many means dressing up in a different costume every night and going out, that experience isn’t universally appealing. Instead, Halloween may look like staying inside your dorm, eating Pillsbury sugar cookies and watching horror films until 3 a.m., at which point you are somehow simultaneously too tired to stay awake and too spooked to turn the lights off.
However, as you get older and become an upperclassman, a new opportunity may be unlocked. For those who move off campus, especially into a house, the newfound freedom of decorating your front lawn enters the picture. Once the trick-or-treater, you are now the one handing out candy. Why not embrace this change and get in the spirit, even if it is on a budget.
Here are some tried-and-true methods of decorating your yard for Halloween without breaking the bank.
Taking a trip to the local dollar store is a fantastic first step. Covering anything in fake cobwebs is a great way to decorate a lot of space without much effort. Foam tombstones look perfectly realistic in the dark, and an entire graveyard can be made for less than $10. Cheap plastic fencing with skulls or spiders molded into the design to surround your graves is usually also available to take your graveyard to the next level.
If you are a real stickler for details, take a few dying flowers from whatever potted plant your parents left you when you moved in or the one that your roommate swore they’d keep alive, and place them in front of the graves.
Next, you’ll want to make sure there are plenty of light sources to make your display visible. While darkness can enhance some features, such as the foam graveyard, it becomes your enemy if no one can see your creativity. Small strobe lights can be bought for surprisingly cheap at places like Spirit Halloween and can add a certain professional quality to your work.
Other small details that can make your yard feel less like a patch of grass in front of a residential house and more like a maze at Six Flags include adding any sort of store-bought mannequin that includes a feature like light-up eyes or playing Halloween music in the background.
If you are looking to spend as little money as possible, look no further than the back of your closet. Any old clothes that you don’t plan on wearing again can be stuffed with leaves to create a makeshift dummy. Slap a cheap plastic skeleton head or rubber mask on top, and you have the centerpiece of your display.
As a final piece of advice, don’t forget to appeal to all audiences. While plastic rats and fabric spiders are definitely chilling to the right age group, it’s important to remember that children of all ages will see your display. Even if you are going for a scarier design, there is nothing wrong with adding a few happier-looking scarecrows or funnier gags instead of scary ones. Don’t abandon the smiling jack-o’-lantern in the name of horror, as in the end, decorating is supposed to be fun.
Besides, we all know it’s really still about the free candy.