On Thursday, while I should have been focused on my One Room Challenge, I took a break to spookify our entryway for Halloween. I just started playing around with what I had on hand and I quickly realized that I do no have ANY money to decorate our entryway!

We have a ton of old Halloween decor from my parents, but I wanted to pull something different together - something that blended my love for spooky stuff, flowers, and natural elements. So, I ventured outside, picked what was remaining in the flower garden, and foraged for some vines in the woods behind the house. A lot of what I picked was dried already aka dead - I just loved the texture of the dried hydrangeas and the deep black color of the dead black eyed susan stems. Even though many flowering plants are on their way out for the season, there’s still so much beauty if you look for it! I also have a few flowers still blooming in the garden that all happened to be in deep, moody colors - dahlias, anemones, cosmos, and cranesbill.

The mirror that I have in my entryway is commonly called the “creepy mirror” by my friends, so it works perfectly for Halloween! I often see old mirrors like that one on resale sites for super cheap (because they hardly serve their purpose anymore), so keep an eye out for one! I love that it’s spooky without being an actual Halloween prop. I also pulled out some of the apothecary and scientific bottles that I have collected over the years - with the right additions they feel like they came right out of a witch’s cottage. Any old bottles from thrift stores or flea markets will do too!

Then I sifted through the Halloween box and pulled out a fake skull, a black LED candle, some paper bats, and fake spider webbing. These are great halloween decor staples to have, so if you need to buy a couple spooky things I would recommend getting those. I try to avoid buying plastic at all costs - my bats are paper and the skull is plaster (actually a tea light holder). The spider webbing comes in a big package and I always just cut a little off of the tightly bound skein - a little goes a long way and it looks way more realistic when you stretch it thin.

Lastly, I felt like it needed one more element to give it texture and color, so I looked around the kitchen and grabbed the bowl of apples. I love how the apples add a nice narrative to the story I am trying to tell. I can imagine a witch picking all of them and turning them in to poison apples to hand out to little children [insert witch cackle].

So here is my witchy recipe for an enchanted Halloween Entryway:

1 old spooky mirror (try Facebook Marketplace)
1 shelf or entry table
A couple vines from the woods (make sure that they are not actually poison - leaves of 3 let it be)
Some dark colored flowers, some dried flower, some dead flowers
A vase (+ a flower frog helps)
1 skull
Old bottles - the more scientific the better
Witch Potion - a few drops of green food coloring (I used neon green gel) and a tablespoon (roughly) of liquid soap in the bottom of a bottle and then add warm water directly from the faucet. The faucet pressure will get the bubbles going and the bubbles will last a few hours.
1 black candle & candleholder
Spiderwebs
A few paper bats
Poison apples

I hope this inspires you to use what you have around you to decorate - there is no need to buy a ton of plastic for Halloween. Just about everything that I used in my display is biodegradable or I will reuse it next year.

Thanks for reading!

Dana