Insider Tips: Pink for Halloween?!?

I am getting super excited for Halloween! It isn't necessarily my favorite holiday for the holiday in itself but I do absolutely love the Halloween decor! Next to Christmas it is my favorite holiday to decorate for and I always wish that I could just leave everything up all the way until I am ready to switch it out for Christmas. My house always feels kind of bare when I take down the spooky things and leave just the "fall" things. Is anyone with me on this or is it just me? :)

But then I also have another sort of dilemma which is that my home isn't decorated with "fallish" or Halloween colors. I have lots of turquoise and pink around my home -- in the pillows, frames and even the pictures and so the question becomes how do I work it all in without having to literally take down and switch out all of the permanent/normal decorations in my home? Of course there are some things I take down and put away just to make room for the holiday decor but then there are other things (like the frames and art) that I must leave in their normal places. Well, I'm here to tell you that it can work! There is no hard and fast rule that says pink can't be included in a Halloween color scheme! When it comes to color, you know I love it and I am not afraid to push the boundaries or break the "rules."

Let's use this layout as an example. The Harvest Moon Add-On Kit jumped out at me as one I knew I would use and get a lot out of (since I do love Halloween and I always have lots of photos of the kids in their costumes!) Then I got it out and also got out my photos of Emily Jane in her adorable little butterfly costume, which was (yep you guessed it) PINK! Lo and behold there was no pink to be found in the Harvest Moon Kit and so I was faced with the same dilemma.... how do I use the fun and spooky and fallish papers and embellishments without making the photos stick out like a sore thumb??!?

Here's what I did..... I grabbed a sheet of pink cardstock even though it wasn't part of the actual kit (shhhhhh, don't tell! remember that part about breaking the rules? only no one needs to know... it's our little secret! ;) ) Then I got out some of my trusty orange maya mist and got spraying. I wanted the pink background to tie in with her costume but I also wanted to add some orange right on the background. That's because I knew that if the background had both orange and pink it would feel like it was made to match the photos and the layout. Not only does it tie in the costume color but it also ties right in with the orange from the halloween accents.

Next you may also notice that I didn't use a huge amount of Halloween accents that were overwhelmingly orange and black. Again I wanted it to feel like Halloween but didn't want the pink to stick out or feel out of place so I went for things that had a lot of colors in them - adding in some blues, greens and yellows as well. Now we have lots of different colors going and all of those colors look great with pink..... which ends up leaving us feeling like the pink blends right in. Whereas if I had only used papers and accents that were strictly orange and black, the pink might have seemed a little off and out of place still.

So in the end it seems opposite of what you might think to try but it worked..... by introducing even more "non-halloween" colors and accents into the mix, it tied the pink in even more and made it all come together perfectly! Who knew that pink could do Halloween so beautifully? :)