I love Halloween home decor that is fun and not-so-spooky. My Halloween home decor this year includes a lot of Harry Potter references.
It’s almost Halloween!! Let the Hocus Pocus and Harry Potter marathons commence! I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Halloween. I HATE scary movies and you couldn’t pay me to get me into a haunted anything. BUT, I love dressing up, carving pumpkins, and Halloween movies intended for children. We actually bought tickets to go to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party in Disney World in 2015, before I realized I was pregnant with my daughter. I’d love to be able to go for real one day, because that’s about as scary as I can handle. So welcome to Ashley’s Not-Even-Relatively-Scary Halloween home decor!
Halloween Home Decor – The Mantel
The mantel is always the first place I start when I’m decorating. It’s the focal point of the room, so whatever I end up with there sets the tone for the rest of my decor. I just lay out all of my options and fiddle around until I find a direction that I like. I bought a Trick Or Treat sign on clearance after Halloween last year that I knew I wanted to use, so I started with that when putting together my Halloween home decor. The sign is a great reminder every day to help my kid learn to say “trick or treat.” Or at least something that sounds like that haha.
I needed some height to go with the Trick or Treat sign, so I found an old candle holder and put a pumpkin on top. It adds color and height to the vignette. On the other side I decided to add a Harry Potter book for height. I love decorating with books for Halloween, just add a little faux cobweb and it looks kinda spooky. I found the little ceramic black pumpkin at Target last year (also on clearance) it’s supposed to light up but the light was broken. And because decorating looks better in three’s I added one of our Harry Potter wands to the mix. We bought wands on our honeymoon when we went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, this one is Sirius Black’s wand.
It’s Friggin Bats
I’m obsessed with all of the bats that I stuck to the fireplace for my Halloween home decor. Our fireplace is so huge and it sometimes feels off to have the mantel decorated and then a bunch of blank brick. This makes everything feel way more cohesive. The only annoying thing is how hard it is to get things to stick to the brick! The bats keep falling down, even after I duct-taped them!
Another frustrating part of the fireplace is the random hole under the mantel. I’m assuming that it was meant to be a spot to store wood, but we use wood often enough to keep it there. This year I put our pumpkins inside. We will be carving the pumpkins when it gets closer to Halloween, but this is a great spot for them for now. I usually keep them outside, but it is still in the 80’s in Richmond and I don’t want them to go bad before Halloween. By the way, we got these pumpkins at Target for only $5 a piece, so if you’re in the market for some pumpkins I’d definitely check it out!
I’m not sure what I will be carving this year. I’ve done Mary Poppins, Olaf from Frozen, Minions and Cinderella in the past. I know that we will be carving a Daniel Tiger pumpkin for my daughter, since that is her current obsession.
Harry Potter Halloween Home Decor
There are Harry Potter touches on the shelf behind the couch for my Halloween home decor. I set up the books with a little “spooky” sign and a pumpkin, plus some more cobwebs and spiders. I also couldn’t resist displaying the Hogwarts crest with another wand and a witch’s hat. This wand was the one I picked out, it’s Hermione Granger’s wand. I love the vine wrapped around it, so cool. In a super nerdy kind of way.
I was so excited for Halloween last year with Mara, but I’m even more excited for this year! We are going to take her to a fall festival and trick or treat around our cul-de-sac. I just know that she’s going to love it. Last year our family costume was Pokemon themed and I was obsessed. I definitely plan on doing a family costume for as long as Mara will stand for it. This year we are going to be The Wiggles! Mara is obsessed with their songs and their show on Hulu (second favorite after Daniel Tiger).
Loved your Halloween ideas. I have a ceramic pumpkin in the kitchen,, a pumpkin, scarecrow and horn of plenty with autumn flowers in the living room and two autumn wreaths outside. Used to have 6 tubs of autumn and Halloween stuff. We downsized this spring and this is what camt with me. In our new home, we expect to get trick or treaters for the first time in years. (Former home was secluded and did not get visitors on Oct 31). Looking forward to a happy Halloween. Same to you.