Watch as Karr Bick Kitchen + Bath owner Jenny Rausch takes you on a tour of her delightfully dark home décor.
The season of witches and goblins is now at hand, and no one could be happier than Karr Bick Kitchen + Bath owner Jenny Rausch, who has garnered a reputation in the community for turning her home into an immersive and eye-catching Halloween showcase.
“I love setting the scene [and] coming up with scenarios and ideas about what is happening,” she explains. “Right now, I have a witches’ apothecary and a couple of bookworm skeletons reading at the dinner table. It may seem bizarre to most people, but I completely get lost in it.”
Rausch has been creating spooky set pieces for as long as she can remember. She draws inspiration from classic movies, old books and anything dark, building her décor up from each previous year with new objects she and her family have either purchased or picked up from nature.
People are also reading…
“I am not one to pull decorations out of a box and put it in the same place twice,” she says. “I use old books, old bones we find in the woods – this year, we picked dead things from the yard to add to the story of it all. I found an old typewriter recently, and now I have to make an Edgar Allan Poe skeleton typing away with piles of old books around him.”
In recent years, Rausch’s family has played a more active role in the Halloween décor, joining her in her passion for the holiday.
“[My daughter] is like my twin when it comes to Halloween,” Rausch says on a Karr Bick YouTube video walking through her Halloween decorating. “She’s the one who actually started putting bones in the fireplace … , which I thought was genius.”
Karr Bick’s YouTube videos also provide ideas for those interested in turning their homes into haunted houses for the season. Tips include displaying antiques, including old books, and using cake stands as lifts to create a layered display on flat surfaces. Rausch also explains that you can get a bigger impact when you fully swap out your regular home décor rather than layer the new elements on top of the day-to-day ones.
For those less interested in the macabre, Rausch adds that Halloween décor can be whatever suits your style – even if she personally detests the plaid fabric pumpkins that pop up this time of year.
“It’s a holiday that you can flex your creative muscle, and it doesn’t have to be anything but fun,” she concludes. “If you don’t like scary, you can still create stories with things. Whatever makes your heart sing; my heart just happens to sing in the dark.”
Karr Bick Kitchen + Bath, 2715 Mercantile Drive, Brentwood, 314-645-6545, karrbick.com