Decorations that complement the crisp fall air range from the warm colors of the harvest season to the spooky embellishments of Halloween.
Local Wal-Marts are offering everything from wreaths, cornucopias with wax fruit and scarecrows on sticks to beautify living spaces for autumn. The most popular colors for this season’s decorations seem to be red, orange and yellow from the variety of store selections on shelves. However, many people still choose to bring the outdoors inside while decorating.
Teacher certified student Lindsey Ross said she bought three large pumpkins and two mini pumpkins at Schaake’s Pumpkin Patch, which is located east of Lawrence. Ross said she spent $16.
Ross said the pumpkin patch has many things to do including a hay maze and walking through the field to personally pick out your pumpkin.
“It was a fun trip to take with my friends,” Ross said.
Ross works at the Boys and Girls Club in Lawrence and will be taking one of the pumpkins she purchased to work so she can carve it into a jack-o’-lantern with the children. Ross said they also will bake the seeds that come from the pumpkin.
“As you get older, you don’t get to do the fun things for Halloween like trick-or-treating,” Ross said.
Ross said this is the first year she has decorated for a holiday because she is now living in a house and has enough space to decorate. Ross said when she was growing up her family decorated for every season and every holiday.
“Decorating is a good way to still connect with the holiday and enhance your living quarters,” Ross said. “If you get pumpkins, you can carry them over into Thanksgiving, so they’re not just for Halloween.”
For those more interested in turning their living space into a creepy Halloween haunt, one can pick up plastic chains, hanging ghosts and caution tape each for less than $5 at Wal-Mart. Halloween also is a good excuse to pig-out on bowls of individually wrapped candies.
Sophomore Ally Voss, a Resident Assistant in Irwin Hall, said she is going to decorate her wing for Halloween.
Voss said she plans to get the usual tacky decorations, but she is going for a scary atmosphere. However, she will be working on a very cheap budget.
Voss said her family did not decorate for Halloween when she was growing up because they lived out in the country, and they felt no one would see their efforts.
“It is a good community builder if we decorate the hall together,” Voss said.
Students residing in the Living and Learning Center face special challenges when it comes to decorating for any season. The building has strict rules about how things are to be hung on the walls. Generally, the students are not being allowed to decorate their doors.
Freshman Adam Vaughn said he has a light-up ghost hanging in his living room window on the third floor of the LLC. Vaughn said he brought the ghost from home after him and his roommates decided to decorate for the holiday.
“It was very bland,” Vaughn said.
In addition to the ghost, Vaughn said he and his roommates have decorated the entire room with spider webs and a light-up skull. He said they would hang decorations on their door if they were allowed to do so.
Vaughn said he is also planning to participate in the most popular tradition associated with Halloween.
“Even though I’m in college, I am still going to go trick-or-treating, but it is for UNICEF, so it is for a good cause,” he said.
