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Reuse your moving boxes for Halloween decorations

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You've just completed your fall home move and now you have all these moving supplies and packing materials sitting around, waiting to be recycled. But wait! You can get one more use out of them before tossing them in the recycle bin - creating a spooky Halloween graveyard on your front lawn! Here's how to do it: Creating a Halloween Front Lawn Graveyard First, make sure you've saved some different sized pieces of cardboard from your move. Cut them into rectangles with rounded tops to resemble tombstones. Tombstones with many different shaped and sized lend a more genuine feel. Using gray paint and a sponge, dab paint in layers onto the cardboard. You can also use a can of gray spray paint. You’ll want to do that part outside, as spray paint fumes are not safe to use in enclosed spaces. You also don’t want to get paint everywhere! Use the thick markers you used to label your moving boxes to write R.I.P. and Here Lies… epitaphs. Take the tombstones outside and place them around the yard. You may want to bend the bottoms at a 90 degree angle to stand them up. You can use your packing tape to have keep it standing. Piles of leaves and rocks will also help keep them in place. Create a graveyard watchman. Stuff a man’s pants, boots and shirt with all the old packing paper and packing peanuts you used to cushion your fragile items and breakables. Give him a pumpkin head and sit him against one of the tombstones. The best part is switching out the fake watchman with a real person on Halloween night. If you time it right, you can scare all the little kiddies that come to the door! For Extra Spookiness Take apart some plastic skeletons and sprinkle them throughout the graves. Try sticking some hands out of the lawn to make it look like your skeleton is trying to dig itself out! A mini-fog machine hidden behind a gravestone is a great way to add spooky ambiance. Do you have any spooky Halloween ideas using left over moving supplies? Let us know in the comments!

You’ve just completed your fall move, and now have a bunch of leftover moving boxes and supplies that need to be recycled. Don’t get rid of them just yet! Re-use what you have left to make some spooky Halloween decorations. Here are some of our favorites:

Lawn Graveyard

Gather up different pieces of cardboard, or boxes of varying size from your move.

Begin to cut the boxes into rectangles. Don’t worry about keeping them the same height as the differences in sizes will make it look more realistic. Draw and cut out rounded tops on each of the boxes to resemble tombstones.

Lay down a tarp or some newspaper and use gray spray paint on each of the boxes. Make sure to do this in an outdoor area as spray paint fumes are not safe to use in enclosed spaces.

Grab some of the markers that you used to label your boxes for your move, and write R.I.P. or other epitaphs onto the tombstones.

For an extra special touch, cut out letters from remaining cardboard and use them for your epitaph.

Scary Monster Door

Make a monster door to create a really spooky effect for the front of your home, without having to spend a bunch of money. Each door design will be different, but almost all will have the following design components.

  1. Eyes -Take some old paper plates and draw or glue on some black pupils. We’ve also seen people use felt material, but you can have nearly the same effect with plates.
  2. Mouth – Use a strip of cardboard  or electrical tape to create a mouth for your door. A fun alternative to creating that scary smile is to make it look it like the door’s mouth is sewn shut.
  3. Hair – Cut tissue paper into strips, or a design to match your Halloween monster.

Bats

If your new home has a bunch of trees, making some hanging bats can really add some spookiness to your home’s Halloween decorations.

Grab any remaining cardboard pieces that you have leftover from your move and print off or draw a bat template. Match your template up to your cardboard and cut each bat out with a box cutter or a pair of scissors.

Take each of the bats that you’ve cut out, and use black spray paint on them in an outdoor area. If you’d like to make your bats a little less scary, glue on some quirky googly eyes.

Finally, use a hole puncher and punch out a hole in the bottom half of each of the bats. Then run a line of string or fishing line through the hole, and securely tie a knot.Then simply hang it from any tree at your home.

We hope that you use these ideas to create a wonderfully spooky Halloween.

 

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