It’s my firm belief that your creative work is directly influenced by your state of mind at the time of its creation. Sometimes, stress or exhaustion can lead to some of the coolest work you’ve ever done. Other times? You might get a house full of Halloween Fails.

This month has been a whole lotta work, and not a lotta sleep.

I promised Phil we’d decorate for Halloween a couple of weeks ago, and I kept my word that day even though I was dead tired.

In retrospect… I probably should have gotten a good night’s sleep and come back to decorating the next day. Welcome to Steph’s House of Halloween Fails!

Halloween Fail 1: Jack-o-Lantern Lamps

I got a bunch of these at the dollar store back when we lived in Long Beach. They’re super cute, but here we are 2 years later and half of them don’t light up anymore. I started out hanging these from a bunch of ceiling fans throughout the house… Which got real annoying real fast. Most of them have been hit by our heads repeatedly and either moved or taken down. (Scrooges!)

Halloween Fail 2: Paper Wall Characters

We also got a bunch of cute cardstock Halloween characters at the dollar store a couple of years ago. They’re a bit worse for wear, but Phil digs em so I try to keep em from getting wrecked. When we were decorating, I’d put a loop of tape on the back, hand it to Phil to put somewhere in the house… And they all ended up right next to each other on 1 square foot of wall.

I don’t know what’s up with the tape slash wall combo in our living room… But the main fail here is the tape doesn’t wanna stick.

And what you’re looking at here is the second attempt to hang these suckers with a different brand of clear tape.

Halloween Fail 3: Spider Webs

I started out with really high hopes for a super awesome spooky Halloween house. I came at it armed with a big ol’ bag of that spider web stuff that looks like cotton candy, the kind you spread out to make all wispy. But that tape. Oh, that tape. I am convinced either my tape or my house hates Halloween, and it’s just making the tape fall right off the wall in protest.

Which in turn makes our spider webs look just a little jankier every day.

Phil keeps getting tangled in this one coming out of the bathroom, incidentally. I should just take this hunk down and throw it out… But the level of awful that this round of holiday decorating has produced is also kind of funny.

Which is why I share with you.

This is my biggest of the Halloween Fails – I’m all about contrast in my design work, and this spider web on our living room wall is so light, and the grey on our wall is light, and they just blend together… and look kinda stupid. AND THAT TAPE. It is obviously fired.

I’m not afraid to tell you this is the last thing I did with our Halloween decorations… and it shows. I can see the exhaustion setting in… and over on the far end by that second spider? I do believe I threw my hands up in the air and said THAT’S IT! THIS IS HALLOWEEN!

But the best part? Phil is 3. And he couldn’t care less how bad the decorations look. He’s just happy we put em up together.

Now… If only they’d stay up. Tape, I’m looking in your direction.

I’ll be honest – it hasn’t all turned out bad. In our decorating adventures, Phil and I did score a couple of Halloween Wins:

Halloween Win 1: Skulls in a Jar

You want something super easy that looks super creepy and cool? Get some small plastic skulls from K-Mart and put em in tiny vases. BOOM. 3 second decoration that even I couldn’t mess up.

Halloween Win 2: Plastic Bat Garland

I found a bag of plastic bats on clearance after Halloween a couple of years ago and never did anything with them – until now! This is another quick and easy one – just hold the bats together and staple.

The scale on this garland is pretty dainty, and it’s not really working hanging above the big window in our dining room very well (Halloween Fail alert)… But it’d look really cute hanging somewhere lower with smaller elements around it so it doesn’t get dwarfed by huge things like our window.

Maybe next year, guys. I think I’m officially over decorating for Halloween.

Bring on Christmas. And some better tape.

Did you decorate for Halloween? And more importantly, did it turn out better than this?