Pumpkin Carvings

• Instead of carving jack-o'-lanterns into creepy faces for Halloween, you can decorate for a Christian fall festival by carving hollow pumpkin lanterns with shapes that communicate your values and what you are grateful for. Simple shapes to carve include a cross and a Jesus fish. For a more advanced decoration with a subtle beauty, do not carve the images all the way through the pumpkin's flesh, but leave a translucent layer of pulp and put a candle inside.
  
  

Natural Decor

• To celebrate the harvest season, use decorations from nature. Hay bales are an attractive way to indicate different areas in your celebration area, such as booths or outdoor games. Arrange decorative squash, apples and autumn flowers like mums to create autumn centerpieces. You can knot together a few stalks of dried corn on the cob, especially colorful varieties, as a decorative door hanging.
  
  

Game and Activity Booths

• If your church is putting on a fall festival, get the whole community involved by inviting each Bible study class to design a booth for the celebration. Give each team freedom to decorate its booth in its own style, though feel free to set an overall tone or theme for all of the booths to align with. Game booths can include beanbag toss, bingo, limbo, miniature golf or basketball toss games. Face painting, puppet shows, inflatables and snack sales are some other activity booth possibilities.
  
  

Balloons and Streamers

• Colorful helium balloons hung around the house or church will add to the festive atmosphere of your event. Use paper streamers to fill out empty areas near the ceiling or string them between lampposts outdoors to make the parking lot feel like a party. For more meaningful decorations, create a booth where children and adults can write what they are thankful for in colored markers on a wide banner, and each time a banner fills up, hang it on a wall for people to read.