Transform Any Tree Into A Spooky Monster With This Fun Halloween Hack—it's So Easy

Right when October begins, the urge to completely decorate and convert your home into the most spooktacular Halloween display is hard to resist. Adorning your house for All Hallows' Eve can almost be as enjoyable as planning out your own perfect costume for the transformative holiday. With so many trimmings and trinkets lining store shelves, it's difficult to keep your wallet and pursestrings closed tight and not get carried away with the task of giving your home a holiday overhaul. Thankfully, there are many cheap and easy Halloween decorations that you can DIY using everyday materials. These DIYs are not limited to interior decor, either. Bring festive fun to the outside of your home using a simple Halloween hack that will transform any tree on your property into an animated monster.

Be the Victor Frankenstein of your household by turning your trees into creepy creatures of the night by DIYing some extra large googly eyes to stick on your front yard trees or shrubbery. It only take a few minutes to make this Halloween decor using items already in your home. All you'll need are black paint and pieces of paper, poster board, or cardboard to make the eyes. Then, it just takes some yarn and tape to hang them up. This DIY decor hack is so fun and easy, you might be tempted to decorate other trees around your home or your neighbors' homes — with their permission, of course — once you finish creating your own spooky front yard forest.

After gathering your materials, stencil and cut out circles from the pieces of paper. Once the circles are created, use black paint to add pupils to what will ultimately become a very large googly eye. Flip your googly eye over and tape pieces of yarn to the back of it. Repeat the steps until you have an abundance of paper peepers. Arrange and secure them to branches of your tree, and voila! You've created a spooky tree monster! Keep adding eyes in pairs or threes to make unique shrubbery creatures that will stay vigilant while trick-or-treaters pass through or enter your yard.

If you don't have the simple materials on hand, swap them for other items in your home. For sturdier eyeballs, swap paper for pieces of cardboard that can be painted white. No black paint? Draw in pupils with black markers or make them with black fabric or construction paper, using rubber cement, wrinkle-free glue sticks, or a tape runner to prevent warping. If yarn isn't durable enough, use twine or tape to give sight to your trees. Don't be afraid to get creative when making your tree monsters. Create eyeballs of varying shapes and sizes, and add details like red fine lines to the whites of the eyes or a set of expressive eyebrows. Arrange the eyes of your spooky tree monsters to look to the side, upwards, or directly at passersby. For extra eeriness, consider DIYing these Mason jar lanterns to serve as the best halloween night lights that can also be hung on branches for nighttime visibility.