Deck Your House for Halloween for $10.

It's almost that time again when creepy becomes cool and scary is sought after. But don't let this year's Halloween costs sneak up on you. With a little bit of planning and creativity, you can create your own ghoulishly gorgeous front yard for less than ten bucks. You can even aim for a cost-free Halloween next year if you try to make and shop for reusable items now that you can save and put away so that you don't have to budget for holiday decorations year after year.

Make Your Own Special Effects

Start out your holiday preparation by thinking about what sorts of things you already have lying around the house that could be good for Halloween décor. Old giveaway clothes can be used to dress your own newspaper scarecrow or other life-size garden ghouls and goblins. You can use old costumes and masks to give your cast of garden characters a monstrous appeal. Add a few severed limbs by stuffing panty hose with socks or newspaper and then place a shoe on the end to make it look like a leg sticking out of a closet, bush, or fake gravestone. Or keep it simple with a few old white sheets that can be draped through your yard to look like a ghost parade.

Cardboard Creativity

Gather old pieces of cardboard or cardboard boxes, colored paper, markers, and glue and sit down with your kids to let your creative juices flow. You can make bat wings, black cats, fake tombstones, pumpkins and more! Once you have your cardboard cutouts ready, simply prop them up in windows or hang them up with tape or a bit of fishing wire or string from the garage.

Go Cobweb Crazy

Every good haunted house is home to a few skilled spiders. Go cobweb crazy by stretching out cotton balls over lamps, windows, doors, bushes and trees! Or if you're looking for a little more detail, try using yarn, string, or crepe paper to create giant spider webs across your windows and throughout your yard in between trees, wood posts, etc.

Design a Shrine

If you keep flowers around the house, don't buy fresh ones for this occasion. Collect all your dead or dying flowers and put them out on display. They will look especially good and haunted if you put them on a table next to some ghostly headshots of the undead. To do this, simply print out some scary pictures or drawings from the internet and put them inside picture frames that you already have. Place your new ghoulish pictures around the house and on the porch next to your dead flowers, add a few tea candles, and voila! You'll have an instant spooky Halloween shrine.

Halloween Bargains

If you're in the mood for that extra store-made something, be on the lookout for Halloween deals. The first place you should check is your local dollar store. Buy a big bag of tea lights there and display them creatively throughout your home and yard in hollowed out gourds or pumpkins or even regular drinking glasses. Try putting the candles in areas where they will cast eerie shadows, or make the shadows yourself by arranging old broken twigs in a tall glass near the candles. You might be surprised at what else you'll find at the dollar store. Keep an eye out for everything from glow-in-the-dark spiders and skeletons to scary masks and lawn stakes, and then see what will work best with your space.

These quick and fun decoration projects cost next to nothing and will instantly turn the front of your house into a Halloween classic. Once you have everything ready, turn down the lights, put on some creepy music and get your candy bowls ready for your first round of trick-or-treaters. When it's all over, keep in mind that it's never too early to start planning for next year: You can save a bundle on Halloween decorations by shopping the day after Halloween. Superstores and specialty stores alike usually discount Halloween items up to 80% the next day, so you can end up taking home store props and other items for little or nothing!