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8 awesomely easy ways to decorate your apartment balcony for Halloween

There are three kinds of Halloween people: Those who love the creepiness, those who try to make it into a cute holiday, and those who think it’s an excuse to dress sexy.

If you fall into the third category, we can’t help you; but for the other two, here are 8 pretty awesome, cheap and easy Halloween decorating ideas for your Toronto apartment balcony.

Here’s a few more (pretty cost efficient) things too, as a bonus:

 

The most wonderful time of the year.

The falling-off-the-balcony skeletons

Procure a pair of creepy (or cute) skeletons from your local Halloween decor store, and a bit of rope. Tie one skeleton to the other at the hands. Then tie the free hand of one of the racks of bones to your balcony. Ta-dah!

Cute or creepy hanging ghosts

Tip: painting adorable faces on your finished ghosts will make them cute. In my experience, no faces makes them particularly creepy. Get a bunch of round, disposable objects, such as golf balls, crumpled up aluminum foil, foam spheres or even balloons. Prop the, on top of something that stands a good two feet off the ground, and protect the surface below with newspaper. Use cheesecloth – either whole sheets (cute) or strips (creepy) – and dip into cornstarch or liquid starch from the store, then drape over the balls. You could also make arms for the ghosts using aluminum foil. Let dry for several hours, then hang the ghosts either by the top of the heads (cute) or by nooses (creepy) on your balcony.

Pumpkins are the epitome of “fall-cute”.

Cute fall decor

If Halloween isn’t your thing, make your balcony cute. Get a bunch of pumpkins and paint them in oranges, browns, golds, blacks and whites in patterns of your choice. Place faux candles in wooden apple crates filled with leaves. Make a Halloween wreath from sticks, leaves and pretty much anything spray painted gold.

Hanging aliens

On Halloween night, put a glow stick inside of a clear balloon and blow it up so it’s about the size of your fist. Put the balloon inside a white or green stocking, tie the top and hang from your balcony.

Giant glowing spider

First, make a spider web on your balcony using white twine. Then, either buy an already-made glowing spider, or make your own using aluminum foil, twigs and/or random objects around the house. Fasten together with glue, then when the glue dries, wrap tiny Christmas lights around the spider. Fasten (securely!) to the spider web and plug it in!

Looks much better without the spider in it, in our humble opinion!

Creepy old balcony

Get an old, wooden rocking chair from your granny, a garage sale or the local thrift store, as well as a straw broom, some random metal buckets and other potentially creepy items. Stretch out giant packs of cotton to look like spider webs over the objects and around your balcony. Add faux candles or purple-coloured Christmas lights, then throw some leaves into the cotton spider webs here and there to make it look like the whole scene’s been hanging around for a while.

Glowing alien jars

First a disclosure: This one isn’t easy. You’ll need different sizes of mason jars, prewashed and dried, some paint brushes and two or more colours of glowing paint. Use the glowing paint to make as many tiny dots on the inside of each mason jar as possible, trying to alternate the colours. Charge up the glowing paint with a flashlight or other light before dusk, then set the glowing alien jars out on your porch!

Body bags

Grab a few clear-ish garbage bag sized plastic bags and pillows in a variety of sizes. You’ll need at least four pillows per body bag. Place the pillows inside of the plastic bag, using narrower ones at the bottom for the legs (in two sections: below the knees and above the knees), a larger pillow for the torso and a small round shape for the head. Tie up the plastic bag at the head. Wrap with rope, as you would a hastily bagged corpse, especially around the neck, torso and feet. With watered down red paint, smear some blood around each body bag and rope, then hang from the balcony.

Ah, the sweet embrace of death.

Don’t have a balcony? Get yourself a place with one here.

Erin Cardone: Born on the Prairies, Erin Cardone grew up knowing there was more to life than canola fields and AAA Alberta Angus. So she escaped, living in Europe and Australia, white-knuckling it through plates of calf brains and raw horse meat, and learning languages she can't remember anymore. After a stint as a jaded, skeptical journalist, she changed tack and began writing rather awesome blogs and showing businesses that advertising is dead, so long live social media, with her businesses Legendary Social Media. She now splits her time between various Canadian cities, Costa Rica and wherever else the wind blows.