If you love fall, Halloween is a great time to follow your whimsy and decorate your home. We asked two local women — Port Orchard’s Deb Howard and Gig Harbor’s Becky Curneen — to share their tips and inspiration, based on 30 years each of collecting and decorating for Halloween.
1. Celebrate the season. If you don’t like fall, then decorating for Halloween will feel more like a chore. Instead of using scary decorations, use whimsical and fun pieces that are friendly for all ages.
2. Collect over time but be selective. Howard, who loves to collect witches and black cats, looks for unique, homemade or whimsical pieces, not the typical fare you’ll find at a discount department store.
3. Select a couple of themes for the décor. Curneen is a woodcarver and loves to make carved pumpkins and share her talent with others. She compliments the pumpkins with witches (she’s also a doll maker) and occasionally buys décor to compliment her own pieces. She also extends the theme to the outdoors, using real pumpkins from a patch.
4. Use timeless pieces and rotate your collection. Both Howard and Curneen purge items that are outdated, broken etc. and are on the lookout for new things they can add now and then.
5. Share ideas with family and friends. Howard’s sister, who lives on the East Coast, is also a Halloween decorator. So the two share ideas all the time. Howard also uses online sites such as Etsy and Pinterest as well as local giftshops for inspiration.
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