This ghostly guide provides everything you need to create a Halloween that's easy, affordable and fun for the whole family. You'll learn how to make basic costume elements, such as hats, capes and masks in three steps or less with no sewing necessary - just a glue gun is all that's needed to turn your kids into Dracula or a superhero. You'll also find festive party games, magic tricks, party-food recipes, pumpkin carving patterns and construction tips for making haunted noisemakers, giant door decorations, and garden tombstones. For the spookiest house on the block, there's a treasure trove of ideas waiting inside Homemade Halloween!

From Fox Chapel Publishing comes a delightful fall craft title. 'Homemade Halloween” offers everything you need to celebrate the season. In addition to quick and easy, affordable costumes and all sorts of fall decorations, this features all sorts of ideas for family fun.

This guide has over 20 pages of patterns and cut-outs suitable for all sorts of fall craft projects. The Halloween costumes are very simple, requiring only three steps and no sewing.

This title offers so many ways to dress up the home and garden. Gardeners will be especially pleased with all the pumpkin projects. This includes easy, step-by-step instructions for easy carved pumpkins. In addition, this offers many other ways to embellish pumpkins, such as craft paints, garden veggies, dried flowers, and recycled materials. The results are just fabulous. Imagine Granny pumpkins, rooster pumpkins, and Humpty Dumpty pumpkins.

In addition, this title also has wonderful party ideas, including fun and games, party decorations, and recipes. Readers will also enjoy the history of Halloween.

For parents, the scariest part of Halloween night isn't the roving bands of
pint-sized ghouls and goblins canvassing their neighborhood but their little
one's earnest question, 'Mom, where's my costume?” Here to the rescue is
Homemade Halloween (Fox Chapel Publishing, $14.95,
96 pages, ISBN 9781565233829), a simple Halloween
how-to for parents who are neither super-crafty nor
uber-organized. The book's ideas for creating a 'spooktacular”
night are easy to create and even easier on the
wallet. Colorful illustrations and photographs, historical
fun facts and important safety pointers fill each page,
and all the basics are covered, from simple and effective
costumes and decorations to tasty culinary treats. Examples
include carving a jack-o'-lantern with 'pumpkin
panache,” serving 'creepy cupcakes” and 'sherbet wizards,”
and creating theatrical costumes in three steps or less with no sewing. Yes,
no sewing! (Parents, it's all about the glue gun.)

Just in time for family fun without too much fright this colorful comprehensive manual of easy, quick ideas to decorate for Halloween is here. The book is segmented into four parts. Under Dandy Disguises, you will find step by step, how to instructions including the materials needed to make great costumes for kids. Ghoulish Gatherings, as you can imagine will give you the best recipes and games for a paranormal party with panache. The Haunted House section includes just what you need to change your home into a spooky surprise. All this is can be accomplished by using the patterns and cutout in the last section of ten pages at the back of the book. The photographs are in color showing detailed angles to support your successful finished product. The publisher used real models and photos are of the real objects. Highly recommended.

A Manual For Mummies - and Mommies - and Little Ghouls

In case you hadn't noticed the orange lights framing porches and the plastic skeletons hanging in trees, Halloween is nearly as big a deal as Christmas in the decorating department.

Any 10-year-old will tell you its costumes and candy are second only to Santa's sack of toys.
Fox Chapel Publishing, East Petersburg, aims to help October revelers do the holiday up right with "Homemade Halloween: Quick and Easy Costumes, Decorations, and Not-So-Frightening Family Fun."

It gives readers ideas for turning your front yard into a cemetary and your front door into a mummy's coffin. It shows readyers how to carve some pumpkins creatively and also borrows the Mr. Potato Head concept, using random accessories to fashion pumpkin-headed beings sure to startle the trick-or-treaters.

The chapter "Dandy Disguises" offers tips for everyone from the standyby white-sheeted ghost and cutlass-carrying pirate, to a knight, a robot, even a pizza chef.

There are special instructions for making hats, masks, tails and wings and painting faces. The big, beautiful, color photographs on each page make it look easy.

The publisher says, "Kids will be delighted to find projects for making cool costumes...Mom will be even happier to find they can be made in 3 steps or less, and require no sewing!"

The book's final 20 pages are devoted to patterns and cutouts. The 80-page paperback, priced at $14.95, also offers tips for throwing a Halloween party, complete with instructions for games and magic tricks and recipes for treats, like Creepy Cupcakes and Witches' Brew.

An excerpt of the Halloween face paint appeared on LifetimeTV.com.

You'll find dozens of patterns with step-by-step instructions for October festivities in Homemade Halloween: Quick and Easy Costumes, Decorations and Not-So-Frightening Family Fun (Fox Chapel Publishing). Besides how-to's for capes, tunics, hats, tails, and wings, this book explains how to paint faces and how to create a hook hand for your pirate and a quiver full of arrows for Robin Hood (or Maid Marian). Color photos show kids in costumes put together with old clothes, wire, paper, boxes, pipe cleaners and other odds and ends.

There also are instructions for baking a pumpkin-shaped cake and decorating a sheet cake like a treasure island. The treat totes kids can make from boxes, baskets, empty fabric softener jugs or shopping bags would work equally well for handing out Halloween goodies. And there are fabulous ideas for decorating pumpkins.

Other easy ideas:

Glue plastic spiders here and there on a couple of yards of white cheesecloth and wrap it around your ghost or mummy as a shawl

Cover a tight-fitting knit hat with paper curls cut from one-inch-wide strips of newspaper or construction paper

This is a great 96-page book from Fox Chapel Publishing. It's chock full of creative step-by-step craft projects. This new fun-for-the-whole-family guide to all things Halloween provides everything you need to trick-or-treat in style, throw a spooktacular party and decorate your home with frightfully fun yard ornaments, door decorations, tombstone markers, carved pumpkins and more.

Kids will love to make cool costumes and masks that resemble their favorite super hero, legendary characters and more. Some of these can be made in three steps or less. The projects are easy enough for the little kids to help out with, and in many cases require ordinary household items like aluminum foil, markers and cardboard.

Using color photos, and easy-to-follow illustrations, Homemade Halloween offers safe, affordable family fun this Halloween and for years to come.