Haunting Your Yard!

I thought it would be fun to go back and show the progress our Halloween yard and set up in general has made throughout the years.

We started decorating for Halloween before 2004, but this is the first year we really started taking pictures - and admittedly, none are really great. Before that it was just a couple of handmade tombstones, made out of wood, that we stuck in the yard. 2004 was the year the graveyard fence was made.

This is the first year things got big - and it made a big deal in the neighborhood with the kids and adults. It was then we realized we might have gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble - we would have to get bigger and better every year…..

This was also the first year we started hand making our tombstones out of sheets of foam. Shane and a couple of friends were turning 40, so we made some tombstones specifically for those people.

One thing we did have fun with that year, but haven’t done it since because it was so difficult to keep up due to the horrible winds here in Colorado, is have a gravedigger in the yard. Shane had gotten a new toy that year - a welder - so he had welded a frame together that we then “dressed”.

He was a challenge though because we were constantly having to set him back up. Later we had even put a pile of dirt with him and a shovel and he held a lantern. The grass beneath where that pile of dirt sat for a month (we set up at the beginning of October) didn’t like that too much and we are even now dealing with dead spots in the lawn due to Halloween props sitting for a month.

One thing that adds a lot to the over atmosphere on Halloween night besides the lighting, music/sounds and fog, it some torches. We learned the hard way one year that the bamboo torches are not a good idea - one caught on fire and then caught one of our juniper bushes on fire. We were able to get it out quickly, thankfully, but after that we started using metal torches! It is something that is always brought up every year and joked about.