Haunting Your Yard!

Halloween Screensavers
By CD Mohatta

Halloween is a festival of great popularity. People of all the age groups enjoy Halloween and every one loves it. Because it is fun and only fun.

During Halloween everyone wants to love the fear and the fun. How can those working on computers be away from that? Because during Halloween Internet offers many free goodies. You get ecards, Desktop wallpapers and Screensavers all free. Download and enjoy. Send, share and enjoy. Have fun, because it is Halloween.

Getting good screensavers for Halloween is a matter of good search. As most of the screensavers weigh a lot, downloading takes some time. If you do not like your selection, you have to download another. Therefore search for a site of good reputation. Choose few of them and download.

Now you can get Halloween screensavers with calendars on them. You cannot only watch the dates but the designs are equally mesmerizing. You will get a large collection of screensavers with calendars not only for Halloween but all major festivals. They are all in flash with video and the text is absolutely lovely.

Holidays are to be enjoyed. One should forget work for that day and rejuvenate oneself. The enjoyment fights with our stress and gives us a new freshness. Halloween is one such festival. Screensavers for Halloween will not only scare you but also those who pass by you and watch the screensaver.

CDMohatta writes text for Free Screensavers. The Screensavers designs include Halloween Screensavers, Calendar Screensavers and Holiday Screensavers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CD_Mohatta

During a recent visit to my sister’s home in Mississippi, we headed down to New Orleans for the weekend and we took a little time to hit a couple of graveyards.  Unfortunately, we were unable to go inside the famous one, St. Louis Cemetery #1, because it was closed on Sunday.

But I thought I’d at least post some pictures that Dylan took.  We didn’t have a lot of time, and we had a 5 year old in the car who didn’t find it very interesting – although he did insist on getting out and having his picture taken in front of one!

So we ended up selling a vast majority of our props – and I look at the old pictures with a little sadness.  On the other hand, we just don’t have the time to dedicate to the set up, etc. right now, not to mention the storage of so much stuff!

But we will still be decorating for Halloween – the main thing we won’t be doing is the graveyard.  It was a LOT of work.  It also did some pretty good damage to our grass each year that would take it about a year to bounce back from.

So if you are into Halloween and plan to start making props for the first time or add props to your set up, you better get started!  And if you’ve got some great ideas you’d like to share, send us a note – we’d love to hear from you and post your ideas!

Well, this may come as a shocker, but we are having to down size.

I have listed our props on Craiglist.  I’m not willing to ship so only contact us if you are in the Colorado area.

http://denver.craigslist.org/for/1157575953.html

http://denver.craigslist.org/for/1157615551.html

If you see pictures on here of something you are interested in, you can contact me through the craigslist link.  We have already sold the graveyard and headstones.  The coffin and FCG are not for sale.

We are selling our storage condo where all of this was housed.  If you need one for your Halloween stuff, check it out!

Finally!

We needed a bit of recovery time after Halloween before getting back to it.  Our house is back to “normal”, Halloween is put away for another year.

But….how did Halloween night go?

This year we had 175 trick or treaters.  Add in the parents and we are guessing just over 300.  We weren’t sure how the Friday night was going to effect us.  It was either going to be bigger than usual because there was no school the next day, or smaller because of a Friday night high school football game and parents going to parties.

It seems as if the football game effected us (not as many older teens) and in general, not as many kids.  But it was a wonderful night.  Perfect weather, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the walk through.

As usual, we get so busy with the kids and parents that we don’t take as many pictures as we’d like.  But we did get a few with the fog.  The weather was ideal earlier in the evening to get a very nice fog rolling on the ground after running it through the fog chiller.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween.  We’ve already got some ideas going for next year!

If you are still trying to figure out what to be for Halloween, Click here to find the perfect costume.  Right now they are offering free shipping with a purchase of $65 or more. 

They also have some great props if you are not inclined to make them yourself.  We do have props that we have bought – we just modify them a bit to suit whatever setting they will be in.  Sometimes you just don’t have the time to make everything yourself.

Not to mention, some of our props – such as the zombie in the graveyard and the witch up on the roof (and the soon to be voodoo man which is being made this weekend) were made by creating the body with pvc pipe, covering it in batting, then putting a Halloween costume over it, or just a mask and using clothing we have around the house.  The zombie costume was one Dylan wore one year and is now part of a prop.

This zombie costume is a pretty common costume and it works great for this sort of thing.  So yes, we make a lot of stuff, but we don’t always do every element from scratch – we do have regular jobs!

The witch costume was an old costume of mine – and the mask (with hat attached and that great green face) was something we bought.

So while all of our headstones, mausoleum, graveyard pillars, etc were made from scratch by us, other elements in our set up were not.  Sometimes you can buy things cheaper than making them yourself – just modify them to make them your own!

I have been working on writing an album review for my other website (inkedmom.com) and it got me thinking about Halloween music, so I wanted to put up a quick blog about Halloween music.

There are obviously a lot of cd’s out there.  Some of sounds, some that are movie soundtracks, some are just spooky music.  All options depending on what you want the music for.  Background for a party, sounds for your haunt, etc.

If you want some great sound effects, we found some we really liked at this website.  We used some of them in our Save the Date mini-movie.

And I’ve mentioned in a blog before that we are fans of the Midnight Syndicate music.  But I have also been looking around at other options, one of those being Napster.  You have access to a lot of music – see if you even like it.  They don’t have everything, but a good variety.  Do a search for haunt, spooky, Halloween, etc.  And hey – you can get a 7 day free trial to try it out.

Click here to get Napster–FREE 7-day trial and start downloading music today!

First off, all credit on these pictures goes to our son Dylan.

So far the witch is surviving any wind.  Yesterday we had some nice breezes.  Here she is during the day.  She is quite the sight on the peak of the roof.  The night picture didn’t turn out too bad, all things considered.  We did adjust the lighting and it is now reaching her face.

Now the ultimate picture would be a full moon behind her.  We’ll have to keep watch for when that might happen.

Her presence on the roof is bothering the dog next door!  Hopefully Ginger will get used to her.

Next we have the ghost in the mausoleum during the day and the night, after they used the Webcaster Gun to add the webbing.  Now this is a device we have tried to make ourselves, but were never able to get it to really work.  This year, I decided to just buy one and I bought the least expensive one – so I wasn’t too sure how the results would be.   Well, as you can see, the results turned out great.  It took a little experimenting – and if they had read the “tips” sheet that came with it they would have figured some things out sooner.  But they were so excited to try it out…. they had a lot of fun with it.

Basically it’s a modified glue gun hooked up to an air compressor.  It shoots the warmed glue sticks and creates the web effect.  Very cool and worth the price.  You can get them at BuyCostumes.com

Finally, we have some general pictures of the graveyard at night with the lighting.  We still haven’t gotten the flying crank ghost set up on the front porch.  But everything else is pretty much done.

We finally finished an order we received for 14 smaller, free standing headstones that are to be center pieces on the tables for a rehearsal dinner that will be taking place Halloween night.

We loved the idea and enjoyed doing these.  Pictured is an example of one on our table.  Each is a little different due to the painting and moss.

These were done with the blue foam from Lowe’s which has a bit of a different texture then what we’ve used in the past.

Between getting these done and Shane being out of town we haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on any of our Halloween stuff.  So starting today we will be getting to it.  Set up for the graveyard will begin.  We’ve got friends coming over to help get things from the storage unit and set things up.  It should be fun and maybe will be a new tradition – setup party!

I’ll post pictures in the next couple of days of the setup taking place and the final result.

So it’s done! 

We finished our Halloween headstone in honor of Edgar Allen Poe.  Shane did a great job with the carving of the raven.  I am still trying to decide if I want to add more aging though.  There is fine line and if you go over board, then the headstones become unreadable.  While we do put lighting on our headstones at night, it’s subtle lighting – so painting the headstones/tombstones too dark turns them into a blob at night.

This weekend we also started a set of custom headstones for someone who wants to use them as centerpieces on tables for a wedding rehearsal dinner that is taking place Halloween night.

For the first time we stopped at Lowes and got the foam there.  We were a bit surprised – Shane noticed that there IS a difference between the pink foam at Home Depot and the blue at Lowes – the blue foam is denser.  He said it cuts different and is more like wood.  He seemed to like working with it better.  I did notice it isn’t as porous – which means for me the priming of the foam first is even more important.  There really isn’t any difference in price, so we may be going with the blue foam from now on out.