I love Halloween.  I really love Halloween.  I think my mom refers to it as OHD, or "Obsessive Halloween Disorder."  I go on Pinterest and pin Halloween related pins all year long.  After Halloween, I immediately begin thinking of what crafts I want to do for next year's Halloween.

But I love that Halloween requires so much imagination.  You get to have some fun and be a little weird and no one can say anything about it.  It also gives me a chance to use my crafty home decor DIY skills!

Last year was our very first Halloween in our new house.  I eagerly pulled out my Halloween decor from previous years to decorate the inside.  But mostly, we were really excited to decorate our porch. We love to do themes and all of my inside decor was based off of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" poem.  I have tons of faux black birds, handmade apothecary bottles (to keep with Poe's love of the morbid and death) and a purchased copy of the complete anthology of Poe.

Yes, I'm obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe...

So of course the porch had to match my Raven theme.  I had come across a pin on Pinterest for a DIY "Dead & Breakfast" sign and both my mom and I thought that would be perfect.  So I created my own "Raven Talon Dead & Breakfast" sign along with a few other Poe themed crafts.

We'll start this tour inside though.  In the living room, I decorated the mantle with my handmade "Spooky" banner and a glimmer string featuring caged ravens.


I also added some pumpkins on the mantle and cabinets, as well as some ravens, a spooky eye, rats, handmade beaded spiders, a Poe shadowbox and a Poe themed altered coffin.

One of the new pieces I made for our first Halloween in our new house.  This Poe shadowbox features a sparkly raven, tiny poison bottles, the grave of the beautiful Lenore and a spider's web.

The Poe themed altered coffin I created for our first Halloween in the new house.  I covered the entire coffin in Halloween themed papers, added a framed photo of Poe himself, a skeleton and a raven.

The front of the coffin lid is covered in a pretty lace that has loops of black elastic that can wrap around a brad on the side of each coffin to keep the lid closed.

Next to the fireplace on the floor, I added a few faux pumpkins (some covered in lacy Martha Stewart pumpkin sleeves) and an arrangement of faux flowers.  I also added my black scroll tree that I bough many years ago at Christmas.  I like it because it is something that can be used for Halloween as well.

We bought these velvet pumpkins but I've made my own for this year.  I even dried and saved my real pumpkin stems!

On to the dining room!  Since my birthday is in the fall, my mom gave me a fabulous table runner from Pier 1 that I had been eyeing for some time.  I just love the beaded ravens on it.  I also added my large black candelabra to the center of the table and placed my faux LED taper candles in it.


The table was set with our usual persimmon and teal placemats and chargers.  But I brought out my crow plates. (they were as close to ravens as I could find and got them at Home Goods). Each place setting also got a glitter tarantula on the napkin.  I set out my skeleton hand serve ware, placed a "poisoned apple" and some moss under a little cupcake dome, added some faux ravens and a few of the glass pumpkins that my mom has collected.




The kitchen island featured our black lace metal tiered server full of fun goodies:  small gourds, a resin skeleton hand, beaded spiders, a faux black owl, pumpkins, a primitive mouse on a candy corn, wooden ravens and fall colored M&Ms in glass jars.



Next to my essential oil diffuser, I placed a faux raven, an old beaker, some bottles with fun Halloween labels and a faux lace pumpkin.  I put a few drops of Raven essential oil in my Aria diffuser and turned it on with a purple light.  It looks a bit like a crystal ball (though I think I need to actually make one of the those for next year)...


Over in the window behind the stove my mom added her glamorous ceramic pumpkins on some glass candlesticks.  The glass candlesticks caught the afternoon light wonderfully in the window...

Our cute little snail is poking out to say hello in this photo!  My mom received her as a birthday gift from my sister and brother-in-law.  It reminded my mom of something she would find in a little shop in Austria.

The entryway got a glass pumpkin candy jar that I had DIYed a mercury glass effect to and filled with some mini skulls, a tray with a potion bottle, small skull and a primitive raven on an old mattress spring.  The mirror got a glitter tarantula and some faux spider webbing.  I placed a faux raven on top of the lamp too.  (You can never have too many ravens!)



I also made a few of my own apothecary potion bottles and spread them throughout the house.

These are 3 of the potion bottles.

I added this to the kitchen island later after making it.  Purple glitter potion named after the beautiful Lenore!

Now we are getting into some of the newer stuff!  We wanted the study to look like the lobby of our Dead & Breakfast.  So we bought a posable skeleton that would be our bellhop and sit behind the "lobby desk."  We made him a bellhop cap and made him hold a ring of skeleton keys.


We also hung some fun prints, stacked some luggage and books, added tarot cards, a teapot and a vintage teacup, ravens, a sign in book and inkwell with feather pen and my Poe anthology.

If you look closely, Edgar A. Poe was the last person to check in to the Raven Talon Dead & Breakfast...

In the corner, we placed my skull with faux floral arrangement.  Last time I had it out for Halloween, I had dried some flowers for it.  I then threw them out after Halloween was over.  This time, I opted to put in faux flowers and chose plenty of black roses and stems then added a few white ones for some contrast.


Then we covered everything in faux spider webbing.  I even gave some of the ravens some sparkly jewelry.  Real ravens love sparkly things and will collect them.

The window in the office got some tattered material, a vacancy sign, some ravens, rats, snakes and a few other items.

I hung some ravens to make them look like they were flying.  This little guy even got some sparkly jewelry he has stolen from one of our "guests!"

Here you can get a little peak of what we have out on our porch!

Even my dog Magnus liked to look outside on our creepy little porch scene.

Here is our porch outside on Halloween just before the sun set!


And the star of our decorations--my DIY "Raven Talon Dead & Breakfast" sign.  We purchased a banister post from our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and I used a free design online for the sign that I altered a little bit for the custom name.  Then, we found the perfect raven to add to the top of the post--a resin one!  This way, he won't get damaged when it rains or snows (thank you, Colorado weather)!

Our next blog post will be a step-by-step process on how to make your own Dead & Breakfast sign like this one and will feature the sign I am making for my Aunt.  (She loved this one so much she wanted her own.)  It will also include the link to the image I used for the sign lettering.  

This picture was taken earlier in the month when I had my mums down by the sign.  Look how gorgeous those mums are!  Almost as pretty as my DIY sign!

Just behind the sign, we had a fun black twig garland on the banister along with some bows and purple sparkly sprays.  We added our "Potions for Sale" sign as well as some purple string lights.  We displayed our metal crows as well as plenty of real and fake pumpkins.

We chose real pumpkins with fun stems from our local pumpkin farm.  We also wanted some with some character and imperfections.  We also bought a few pumpkins from some stores that were warty looking too!  My poor mums were pretty much done blooming by the time Halloween night arrived so back up onto the porch the went with some pumpkins.  They kind of look like Mortica Adams' roses...

We made a tomato cage witch and lit her up with string lights inside her dress.  We brought out the cauldron and made it bubble with some green sparkly deco mesh and my fogger.  We chilled the fog inside the cauldron with frozen bottles of water to make the fog look like it was roiling and would fall to the ground once it came out of the cauldron.  We also added a Welcome sign we purchased at Joann's above our little witch.

The fog machine is hidden under the slatted box to allow air to flow.  We placed some orange lights under the cauldron as glowing embers and then added some pumpkins.  Don't you just love that warty one back there?!

The front door got a wreath that matched the garland on the bannister.  I added some silver sparkly sprays and of course a faux raven to it.  Our little witch left her broom in the corner by the door--we handmade this by scavenging for a fallen branch and some weeds near our house.



In the sidelight we hung some more spooky cloth, a handmade beaded spider and put a rat in the bottom of the window.  We filled our lanterns with glimmer strings and Christmas ornaments to make it look like spooky cauldron bubbles.  We also added some white rope light to the side of the house to help light up the entry way a bit more for the trick-or-treaters.



Here is a shot of the Dead & Breakfast lobby from outside after dark.  The trick-or-treaters really loved the scene we set for them!

I even made an elevator display for above our closet doors.  Can you see it back there?

Just under the window on the porch we set up a little scene on our outdoor furniture.  Inside an old suitcase is a blanket, skeleton parts and a tag that is labeled "Mr. Poe," because of course!  We also added our pillow with the skull wearing a hat and raven to the chair and placed a solar powered lantern on our garden stool.


And here is the whole scene lit up at night.  We lit our sign up with a purple spotlight and it threw a wonderfully spooky shadow across the front of the house!


And there it is, the full tour of our home decorated as a haunted Dead & Breakfast for Halloween.  I hope you enjoyed it!  I can't wait to make more fun decor items for this Halloween!  I'll leave you with this final photo of all my handmade beaded spiders gathered up since it was hard to see them in all the other photos.

The clear and pastel spider got hung on some fishing line in the sidelight while the others got spread around the house.  Aren't they pretty?  I had time to make a few extras to send to some friends and my cousin who also love Halloween as much as I do!

Happy Halloween Decorating!
Adrienne