Halloween is an excellent time to decorate your house. From fun to scary, you can haunt your house and thrill your neighbors, guests and trick-or-treaters with creativity and style. It all starts by developing a theme. The best themes are timeless, ones you can use year after year.

Displaying your decorating skills in the front yard is a great way to show off! Think about it, every car driving by is full of potential admirers. A bubble-fog machine sets the perfect mood. The bubble-fog machine creates large bubbles filled with dense fog that releases and lingers when the bubbles pop. It’s a perfect two-in-one that delights adults as well as children. Inflatables are also a terrific display choice, and are extremely easy to deflate and store in the offseason. Life-size figures also provide an opportunity to flex creative muscles.

Another way to show off your front yard is with a strobe light set. The lights create a spooky atmosphere. And if you get one with a sound box, the ghastly sounds will really take your haunted house to the next spooky level.

Turn the inside of your house into a haunted mansion with some spirited decorations and mood lighting. If you have friends that aren’t easily spooked, consider putting a life-size animated figure where no one would expect it, like the bathroom. Closets and hallways are also great places to put noise-making or animated figures — the key to making someone jump in fright is to scare them when they aren’t expecting it.

Spooky fabrics can be thrown over your couch or kitchen chairs so guests can enjoy your love of Halloween. Keep fun figurines on tables and switch normal light bulbs with to black lights or colored bulbs. A paper maché gargoyle figure will look fantastic on your kitchen or dining-room table, entertaining your guests just by being there. With a little creativity, you can be the Halloween hostess with the mostess without breaking your budget.

Don’t forget to keep your Halloween theme going straight through to your backyard. Can people see your backyard from the street? Put some inflatable figures back there. Halloween inflatable items are getting more sophisticated every year, including inflatable cemetery entryways and crime scenes! A full-size witch with fogging cauldron is sure to scare.

Pumpkins are the quintessential Halloween decoration, no matter what theme you choose. The bright, fun and spooky feelings pumpkins inspire are what make them a hit every Halloween. In addition to carving, pumpkins can be used as-is to add more color to your yard or inside your home. If you are looking to build pumpkin piles, use little hay bales or boxes covered with black cloth.

Last but not least, don’t scare the trick-or-treaters by giving out bad candy. Nothing homemade gets by parents these days, so make sure you only hand out factory-sealed candy that parents can feel good giving to their kids.