Ruby was recently telling me that she loves it when people decorate their houses for Halloween and asked why ours isn’t decorated like those houses. We don’t have an actual house (we live in the top floor of a duplex) or yard or really much of an area to decorate other than a door and a large bush. Even though we don’t have a full-on house, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t join in on the decorating fun! So, I told her that we would make some decorations and make our house fun, too!

So we've partnered with Target to share an easy and fun way to decorate for Halloween that can be used whether you have an apartment, duplex, or house! I'm always looking for ways to say "Halloween" that's different than the usual iconography (witches, ghosts, bats) you'd see elsewhere. So I love the idea of adding funny/silly/spooky eyes around your home to welcome trick-or-treaters this year. 

Here's how to make these "Eyes on You" decorations…

You'll need:

Felt

Feathers

Scissors

Black paper plates

Craft glue

Fuzzy Sticks

Poms (optional)

Wooden Skewers

Fishing Line or clear string

Here's how:

1. Using thick felt, sketch out the eye shapes that you want to make in sizes that fit where you want to place them (we did a mix of colors and sizes from 2” to 8” in diameter). Some can be scary or just fun and colorful like ours. We laid out the various pieces of felt and feathers on a table and arranged them in color combinations that we liked before gluing them down permanently.

2. Once you’ve found a bunch of pairs of eyes you like, cut and glue to your heart's content. Elements like feathers and poms make great eyebrows, while felt cut in circles create parts of the actual eye (iris, pupil, etc.). We also used simple black paper plates as an easy “eye” to apply felt pupils to. But if you’re in a climate where the paper plates could get wet too easily, then stick to just the felt material which will hold up longer outdoors.

3. Use glue to attach all the parts of each eyes together. Once the eyes are dry you can choose whether to hang them (and attach fishing line in the back with tape) or to glue sticks on the bottom back so they can be placed in the ground. We also used the sticks to pair two eyes together to nestle in bushes or trees. Then, have fun putting these eyeballs wherever you choose! They work in front of a house, duplex, or even on an apartment door!

Just yesterday, Target launched this cool Treatster mobile site where you can visit the site from your phone and share the coolest decorated houses that people should see for Halloween. If you pass by an awesome house this week, simply add them to the site so trick-or-treaters know to look out for it. Or if your house is especially spooky, you can add your own house. Trick-or-treaters go straight to the sweetest houses, Halloween fanatics get lots of trick-or-treaters, and people who don’t want to bother don’t get bothered.

Oh, and I’ll have a chance test out one of these special Treatster pumpkins (only 10 were made for now) as a demonstration of where trick-or-treating is headed. When you find a house with the coolest costumes, the creepiest decorations or the best candy, you push the big red button on the back and the pumpkin will automatically add that house to the map and vote for it on the Treatster mobile site. Pretty cool! (Check out my Instagram this weekend to see it in action!)