Halloween Yard Art
One of the things I love about Seattle is how everyone gets REALLY into Halloween. For a city that can be known for it’s social frostiness, and for a holiday that can have spooky and scary overtones, it’s actually a time when neighbors here come together, chat with each other over yard art choices, and organize neighborhood trick or treating masses of chaos (otherwise known as groups of kids). The warmth and beauty of our community at this time of year makes my heart happy. When else can you knock on a stranger’s door and they welcome you and give you a treat?
While we haven’t invested in any giant skeletons (a Seattle staple year-long), I’ve had a lot of fun combining my love of crafting with Halloween decorations in our front yard. The past few years, I’ve invited the neighborhood to participate in the crafting process, and it’s been an amazing way to connect with neighbors, see other people’s creativity, and add to the joy of our community in a small way.
Keep scrolling down to see what this has looked like from year to year.
Community Pumpkin Patch — 2023
For 2023, I invited our neighbors to color in a pumpkin, and help us grow a giant pumpkin patch in our front yard. We received over 50 unique pumpkins! It was so fun to see the patch grow over course of October. With a little cutting, orange tissue paper, lamination (necessary for the rainy Seattle October), chopsticks, and electric tea lights, we had a very glowy and magical pumpkin patch on Halloween! Part of the fun was watching neighbors of all ages walk by and find the pumpkins that they made.
Boo Years Eve — 2025
It was a ghostly year! Neighbors and friends drew ghost faces onto white plastic grocery bags (Fred Meyer pickup anyone?) and we hung them on lights. Watching the lit up ghosts flutter in the winds was delightful.
Monster Dance Party — 2024
Playing on a similar craft idea as the pumpkin patch, I invited neighbors to color in dancing monsters to join in our monster dance party on Halloween. We got a lot of amazing and crazy creations. Joshua lent me his dance party light for the night of Halloween and we played some fun music!
Happy Hammerween — 2022
We were still in the midst of finishing up a large building project on our house (adding a second story), so I decided to lean into the reality of the construction materials still littered around our front yard. I made a foam core Hammering Man on a ladder with a construction hat. I even got his arm moving for about 15 minutes before the engineering reality of foam moving against foam made that not work anymore. But he was still fun not in motion! Happy Hammer-ween!
peek-a-BOO! — 2020
For our Covid halloween, Joshua was 2, and that felt like the perfect time to do a Peek-a-BOO! themed yard. Each day I added one more ghost to the yard, so for neighbors walking by, the challenge was to find (and count for the littles) the ghosts in the yard. I also made a Peek-a-BOO! photo booth that was 2-year-old sized. I laughed pretty hard when I saw a lot of neighbors use it to take photos of their pets.
“Knock, Knock…” — 2017
This year we leaned into the silly and illustrated the classic banana/orange knock knock joke. We had one giant banana holding a “Knock knock” sign. And then a lot of bananas scattered around the yard. And one orange that we would move around the yard each day to make for a finding challenge. On halloween night, we lined up all the bananas on the walkway to our door, and then placed the orange surprise at the end!
