Here is everything you need to know to make your home a Halloween haven:

1. Keep to your budget:

   Before you bring the kids with you to gather up some Halloween decorations, know what your budget is. If your children are old enough, explain this to them but if not, be clear that you will get what you can. Don’t go overbudget to please the kids and bow to the pressures as there are many other things to pay for so stick to your budget rigidly. 

2. Shop smartly

   Don’t bring the kids to the shops with the expensive decorations – sure they are lovely to look at but if they are out of your budget, leave that place off your shopping list. Instead, look online before you go and look at the prices. This way, you'll see where you can get some of the best value. Often Halloween stuff can be picked up rather cheaply and making the most of what you have is important too. 
   

3. Be creative

   If you are artistic or if the kiddies are, you could always buy loads of art supplies and make decorations yourselves. This can be a lot of fun and it’s a good way to save money - with a few bottles of paint and lots of pom poms and lolly pop sticks for example.
   
   Look online for some Halloween inspiration and decide what you and your family can make easily at home. With a large page you could make a poster for the windows and with some sheets of red paper you could make bloody hands for the inside of the house and blue tack them around. 

4. Make food on the day

   Make the toffee or chocolate apples, bake some cupcakes and ice them with Halloween inspired colours and create scary looking drinks! If you have lots of kids visiting, this is a nice way to create the right atmosphere. 
   

5. Play games and play scary music

   Grab some apples so the kids can play apple bobbing or pin the teeth on the vampire (you can draw a vampire on a sheet easily) and make teeth out of white tack!
   
   Play lots of scary music all over the house and stick a scary picture on the back of doors – especially the inside doors so the kids can scare each other. Watch scary movies after the kids have ‘trick or treated’ and this will be a great end to a wonderful Halloween. 

6. Keep building on it:

   While you may not be able to get all the Halloween stuff this year that you would like there is always next year. Keep building on what you have and in time you’ll have plenty of Halloween bits. Another good tip is to search the shops after Halloween when they sell off items for a fraction of the price. You can pop these things away for next year and then you are one step ahead!