Halloween Bat cave

Last year I made our house into a bat cave for Halloween.  It is pretty easy to do and the best - cheap!

I went to MarthStewart.com and put 'bat template' in the search.  You could also just search for Halloween and you will find this bat template and a really cool mouse template.  She also has many free pumpkin carving downloads.  You can download ideas for everything from how to make a snake pumpkin to using a drill and carving holes into patterns in your pumpkin.  All of these are FREE!!!!

I downloaded 2 templates, the first is a bat flying and the other is a bat that looks like it is hanging.

I used a hole punch and punched a hole in the flying bat so I could hang them last year.  I also used a copier and made them all different sizes.  The hardest part of this project is cutting them all out.  I would suggest if you are hanging these outside, as I did last year, that you make them out of card stock or fun foam.  This year we just used construction paper. My daughter and I cut and cut and cut till our hands hurt!  When we were finished we had about 100 of these cut out.  My daughter then took some glow in the dark paint I had left over and painted eyes and a mouth on both sides of each bat.  I hung them from fishing wire under the eaves outside along with ripped trash bags.  The effect was pretty cool!

This year instead of hanging them outside I decided to hang them inside and make the bats look like they were flying from the 'bat cave' out my door.
I took the flying bats and folded each wing.

Then using packing tape I stuck them to the wall.  I like them!

If you go to Martha Stewart's website you will also see some really cool mice.  They look really good on stairs.  My stairs go down so the only way you'd see them is if you come up from the basement so I didn't print them off.
BTW do you like my entry table?  My favorite jack-o-lantern scarecrow lamp from the late 60s early 70s when I was a kid and the skeleton I got from Gordman's this year.  You can put a tea light in his head and in the pumpkin he is carrying.  I use the faux tea lights so I don't have to worry about them dripping or catching fire.  The other pumpkin is ceramic that I got at Michael's 2 years ago.  I can also light this up with a candle and again I use a faux candle.  Then there is a bunch of skull's in a jar from the dollar store.  The little ceramic do-dad I got from the dollar store as well as the little pumpkins, they are wax and actually candles but I like them too much to burn.
On Thursday I'll be sharing some of my other decorating and next week I'll share my front door!
Do you decorate for Halloween?  If so I'd love for you to share on my facebook page!  Happy decorating!