Pirate Themed Halloween DIY

Every year at our campground I host a “Halloween in August” celebration.  The day starts off with a Halloween craft followed by a costume parade, site decorating contest, and finally trick-or-treat. I come up with a different theme each year for our own site.  This year our theme was a pirate themed halloween.

I didn’t realize how popular this celebration would become.  Now I feel like I have to out-do myself every year. This is hard, considering I go all-out anyway.  We already have our theme picked out for next year so I have all year to plan this time.  🙂

Pirate Ship Camper

Our pirate theme started out with decorating our camper to look like a Pirate ship.  We used 2 old pallets with a brown tarp in the center to make the bow.  Then we draped pirate cloth and netting on it and added some treasures, an anchor, and skeleton pirate with parrot.  Our sail was made from a drop cloth, red striped tablecloth and PVC pipes.  We also collected a bunch of logs from the camp owner and tied them together with rope to make the pier posts.  This was the start of our pirate Halloween.

The Pirate Halloween Walk-Thru

We have a little path through some trees on our site.  We use this path to make a Halloween walk-thru.  Our Pirate themed Halloween path started off looking like a pier or ship deck that brings you to a “walk the plank”. During all the craziness I forgot to put the shark fins in the “water” :(.  (Thank you Lauren for your artistic talents painting the fins.)

We were a little bummed because the campground made us put a piece of plywood over the “deck” for safety. It was safer, but ruined the look of the deck a little.  But all in all I liked the way it turned out.

Next up in the path were the pirates making away with some treasure in our kayak “aka” pirate ship LOL

Around the corner was a graveyard with a very appropriate warning.

With some inspiration from Disney World “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride, we made our own version of the pirates in jail.  We used painted, pink, insulation foam boards to make the jail walls and taped painted PVC pipe to the back for the bars.

We also had a few children in hanging cells.  Made from laundry baskets.

      

At the end of the trail we put a table to give out candy “loot bags” and collected money for a local cause.

The entire Pirate themed Halloween walk thru was lined with orange Halloween lights to mark out the path. We accented with strobe lights and lanterns for an eerie effect.  I wish I could show you how amazing it looked at night but all of my pictures were too dark. 🙁

Decorating the Campsite

And finally we decorated our campsite and camper appropriately with a bar (including “Pirate Punch”) and lots of pirate treasure.

The night finished with the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean” of course, projected onto a sheet hanging from our screen porch.  The kids lined up their chairs along the front of our site to watch.

It really was a great time for all.  I enjoyed spending time with my whole family setting up the display.  Seeing all the kids faces while going thru the walk makes me smile.  But getting to meet a lot of the other seasonal campers while enjoying some Pirates Punch by the campfire was by far the most rewarding.

It was a lot of hard work, but all worth it considering I brought all of it home to use in my front yard for “real” Halloween.  A special “thank you” to my husband Dale who embraces all of my crazy, expensive, and exhausting ideas and gets right into it with me.  Love you Babe!

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