While traveling, we are always searching for ideas and inspirations so the current year's decorations and food will be different from what we've published in the past, and even more intriguing

This year's Halloween planning was no different. While in California earlier this year, I visited a wonderful antiques store, Blackman Cruz Workshop, in Los Angeles. There I saw incense burners made of bronze in the shape of bats. I also saw a lone claw foot from an old bathtub that was being used as a paperweight. My mind started to work, and this article was born.

The magazine's decorating director, Kevin Sharkey, who was traveling with me, loved the idea of a fancy, glittery, eerie, somewhat macabre holiday decorating scheme for my house in Bedford. After we put our heads together, plans were laid and prototypes created. What you see here is the result. Even if you use just one or two of these ideas, you will infuse your home with some very scary stuff.

When we were still selling our inspiring products via Martha by Mail, our catalog, we offered a replica of a human skeleton in the months leading up to Halloween. They sold so well, we started selling plastic skeleton parts. A giant glass cheese dome, something I have had in my kitchen for many years, formed the perfect display case for green-glittered skulls and bones when set atop a very large cake stand. A silver-glittered hand became a bony place-card holder, and its ideal resting spot was on a silver lusterware plate.