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Spooky Season DIY

Writer's picture: Goodwill Industries of ARGoodwill Industries of AR

Updated: Jan 4, 2022

[By Katie Kornreich]


To know me, is to know how much I love Halloween. Spooky season is the best time of the year and perfect for creative people such as me. I live for the Halloween season and begin planning my Halloween costumes around May.


While I was growing up, I was not allowed to celebrate the holiday. As an adult, I enjoy the fun of decorating, the food, scary movies and costumes. My husband, Kolton, is incredibly gracious with the skeletons and spiders currently haunting our living room. To prepare for the Halloween season, which typically begins in late August for us, my husband and I make several trips to Goodwill for decorations and costumes. Goodwill never disappoints for Halloween treasures.


handmade halloween decor

Recently, at a local Goodwill, I found a wooden “Trick or Treat” door sign in perfect condition. The bats and cats eating candy now grace my office door. Little knick-knacks make the perfect Halloween décor! After some black and red paint and some spider webs, anything can be transformed into décor fit for a haunted house. Last year I found a glass lantern, hard back books, and sweet bunny figurine. The lantern became a skeleton's terrarium, complete with a real spider web (but no real spider). A zombie bit the easter bunny, as it is now a metallic gray-black color with lumps and bumps and bright red beady eyes. It had to be moved to my office because it scared one of my dogs. Hardback books are so easy to convert into spell books! A little hot glue, some spray paint and a plastic frog, snake or spider will do the trick!


lantern used as a Halloween terrarium

Our first Halloween as a couple, my husband and I went as Alexander and Eliza Hamilton. We shopped around at several different stores, some of them multiple times, to find the items we needed.


101 Dalmatian costumes

Last year, our family of two became a family of three, with the addition of our rescued furbaby, Lafayette. He is a tri-colored beagle mix with too many freckles to count. His favorite movie is Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. How do we know this? If he is in a different room when we start the movie, he will run into our room and look at the screen. Kolton and I knew we had no choice but to do a family costume of Antia, Roger and Pongo.


This year, we are a family of four. Jack, our fourteen-year-old rescue golden retriever mix, is a foster-fail. Kolton and I decided to continue the theme of family costumes. We were originally going to go as characters from Disney Pixar’s Monster’s Inc., since we lovingly refer to our boys as “monsters.” But Kolton and I have been fans of The Addams Family for years, and have watched the movies many times this year, including their new film, The Addams Family 2. We felt it would be much more appropriate this year to dress as Morticia and Gomez Addams. I have always adored Morticia’s makeup and look, and we love the romance between her and Gomez. Lafayette and Jack can still go as monsters, since they will be dressed as Pugsley and Cousin Itt, respectively. Kolton and I are off to Goodwill this weekend for more thrifting and crafting! As I said before, Halloween is the best time of the year, for ghouls like me.

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