Trick-or-Treating Treasure Chest

This treasure chest does double duty as décor and a candy bowl for trick-or-treaters. Simply fill an old trunk with pillows, then pile on the chocolate coins and other foil-wrapped goodies. Complete the look with faux jewelry, plastic skulls, a treasure map, and more booty.

Hanging Bats

Transform your front porch into a bat cave with these paper cut-outs, which are easy to make thanks to our printable template. Use clear fishing line to suspend the bats from your porch's rafters. Hang your bats in different directions for a realistic look.

Googly-Eyed Plants

Give your porch plants personality this Halloween with these DIY googly eyes. To make them, paint a pair of gourds white, then carefully paint black circles for pupils. Hot-glue the eyeballs onto wooden stalks and nestle them into the leaves.

Black Magic Wreath

The perfect complement to a gothic-inspired front porch, this wreath is the picture of sooky sophistication. To make it, lay out a dried grapevine wreath on a flat work surface. Snip your choice of faux flowers from their stems. Arrange them onto the wreath and hot glue them into place. Spray the entire wreath with black paint and let it dry completely before displaying.

Woodland Pumpkins

Go for a woodland theme on your front porch with our bunny and fox templates. To make these whimsical gourds, hollow the pumpkin out from the bottom, tape on a template, and press a pin into the skin along the lines. Then remove the paper and connect the dots with a linoleum cutter, scraping the surface just deeply enough for light to shine through.

Serpent and Toad Pumpkins

Give reptiles and amphibians a home on your front porch throughout October. The snake and toad pumpkins come together quickly, thanks to our printable templates. After carving, sit the pumpkins on top of wooden crates labeled "live toads" and "live serpents."

Crows

What's spookier than a murder of crows on All Hallows' Eve? To re-create this scene, place a tall fallen tree branch on the side of your porch and use twine or fishing line to affix faux crows (which you can purchase online or from your local craft store) to the stems.

Heirloom Pumpkins

Not all Halloween décor has to be spooky. Brighten your porch steps with an array of heirloom pumpkins in various shapes and sizes. This mix includes peachy Porcelain Doll, mottled Kakai, and blood-orange Cinderella Rouge varieties, and green-dappled Lakota winter squashes.

Mini Haunted House

Re-create this spooky miniature mansion for your own hometown haunting. To make it, take an old dollhouse and brush the walls with chalk paint and dirt to give it a time-forgotten look. Scour your yard or neighborhood for some branches, then suspend them above the house and hang paper bats from the branches to bring the haunted house to life.

Jump Scare Candy Bowl

Give trick-or-treaters a playful fright with our "nobody's home" fake-out. To begin, use chalk to sketch out the details of a door on black kraft paper and tape it to the inside of your door frame. Cut a hole in the center that's just big enough to put your arm through, and place a bowl of candy below. On Halloween, transform your arm into a werewolf's paw and lightly grab trick-or-treaters as they reach for a piece of candy.

Unlucky Numbers

A subtle, yet eery detail, these bloody numbers are achieved with colored hot glue. Squirt the red glue onto the edges of your digits, blowing on it to accelerate cooling and help control the drops. The best part? Once Halloween is over you'll be able to easily peel off the glue from your numbers.

Owl Night Watchers

Keep your home protected on mischief night with these guards. To make their perches, paint a few branches from your yard black and wedge them into place. Next, enlarge our owl template to your desired size; cut out the template and trace it onto poster board. Secure the owls onto windows on either side of your door so it looks like they're perched on the branches.

Ravens in Waiting

Use our template to make an unkindness of ravens to display on your porch. Cut out the template and trace it onto black kraft paper, repeating until you have your desired number of ravens. Make perches from cardboard tubes and suspend them with twine (or buy real bird perches, like we did here), then glue the ravens to the base.

Broom Garland Doorway

Create a bewitching entryway by wiring two brooms together so they form an X and suspending them from your front door instead of a holiday wreath. Take the display up a notch by making a border of little broom heads made from bundles of raffia. To start, cut raffia into 7-inch lengths and gather into small bundles; wrap one end of each bundle with masking tape to secure in a broom shape. For the garland base, cut three pieces of 1/2-inch thick sisal rope: two pieces should be just longer than the door's sides and one just longer than its top. Then, wire a "broom" to the end of one of the long ropes with 24-gauge brass wire on a spool. Without cutting the wire, continue adding and overlapping brooms until you reach the end; repeat with other long rope.

Spider Egg Sac

For the truly macabre among us, this spider egg sac decoration will play up your doorway's drama this season. Fill white stockings with fake spider web batting, forming a globe shape. Then place a few spiders on the inside and outside of the "sac." Make multiple sacs and suspend them at varying heights from your porch rafters to complete the look.

Luminaries

Light the walkway leading up to your front door for trick-or-treaters with these DIY luminaries. Start by collecting leaves and arranging them on top of colored-paper bags. Put 1 teaspoon of acrylic paint in a misting bottle, fill it halfway with water, and shake to combine. Spray a paper bag with the mixture and let it dry. Remove the leaves and place faux candles inside the bags to illuminate them.

Balloon Spiders

Black balloons become a trio of creepy-crawly spiders with this easy DIY. To begin, inflate two round balloons—a larger one for the abdomen and a smaller one for the head. Tie the balloons together at the ends with thread. Using a balloon pump, inflate four long, skinny balloons, leaving a 3-inch "tail" at the end of each.

Using a skinny balloon, make one set of legs: Starting a few inches from the neck, twist a balloon, holding it in place, and move about 1 inch along the ballon and twist again. Bring the two twists together, and grab the resulting bubble with one hand and twist, which should lock the twists together. Move up another few inches, and repeat to make another knee. Repeat twice more to make four short segments and four knees, with one long section in the center, since air will shift into the tail as you work.

Repeat this process with three more balloons. Then twist one set of legs in the center of the longest segment; hold it in place, and twist a second set in the same place. Place the two sets together, with twisted centers interlocking; the balloons should hold. Finish up by repeating the process with two more sets of legs. Tie these legs to the body, and hang the spider on string or monofilament outside.

Wriggling Snake Wreath

A grapevine wreath is the base of this easy DIY. Paint it midnight black then affix toy snakes to it with floral wire. Hang it on your front door to get Halloween off to a hauntingly good start.