Haunting Your Yard!

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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!

We’ve had been busy getting the house ready for the Halloween party, which was this last Saturday and was a big success.

One thing we did for the party that will also be part of the walk through on Halloween night is get the voodoo room done.  These are some quick pictures Dylan took – one with flash and one without.  We’ll be adding to this a bit on Halloween night, so we’ll take some more detailed pictures then.

We are really happy with how this turned out.  The added extra element is the voodoo drums quietly playing in the background.  The room is lit only by candles.  The walls are pallets stacked on each other and screwed together.  I then hung the torn creepy cloth I made from the cheese cloth, and hung branches from my juniper bushes around.

We got more done today than I thought we would.  Thank goodness for the beautiful weather!

Way back when I blogged about our “find” at a local recycle place.  It was metal work to make an arch for our existing pillars and a secondary entrance to the graveyard.

Shane finally was able to give it some time today and the second entrance is complete.  I am really happy with how this turned out.  It’s hard to see in the sun, but he also added spider webs to it by using that great Webcaster Gun.  This time though we did use fishing line to get the webbing started.

Dylan spent the day working on the voodoo guy that will go in the voodoo section of our walk through.

Voodoo guy was made using pvp pipe for the limbs, batting to give him bulk, a wig holder head to put in the mask, and some hands from another prop that broke years ago and I just happened to keep the hands.

Most of my day was spent tearing apart the walls that were used in previous years.  We had put chicken wire and paper mache on them to create cave walls.  We now want to use those walls in the “slabatorium”, so I have been taking all the chicken wire and paper mache off.  If I never see chicken wire again I’ll be happy!  After I finished that I worked on bloodying up a prop we bought and I also put the lettering on the door, and the blood.  The door we got at the recycle place for $10.  I cut out the template to put the lettering on.  Then I bloodied up my hands and put those on the window.

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 don’t know if last night was truly a full moon – but it was close enough.  And it was clear enough for Dylan to get some pictures.  He had to be out there at just the right time for the moon to be in a position to be photographed with the graveyard.

In this first picture of the graveyard and the mausoleum you can see the moon peaking out of the tree.

This next picture was kind of odd – which is why I’m posting it.  He used the flash and it almost looks like it was taken during the day and that the moon is the sun.

The lighting was just so….strange.  You can see the flood lights so you know it’s night, but it doesn’t look like night.

Next was this close up of the witch on the roof.

This one came out pretty well considering he had to zoom in.

The last pictures I wanted to post were of the flying crank ghost.  We hadn’t had a chance to take any pictures after setting her up because the weather had gotten so bad.  This is the first year we’ve actually put her outside.

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.

So we started the outside setup this past weekend.  Most, but not quite all is done.  From here on out, much of the work will be focused on getting the walk through ready.

So I am posting pictures of the graveyard, mausoleum, etc. during the day.  Once we get the fcg up I’ll post some more.  We have some lighting touches to do regarding the witch – so night photos will be posted later.  These photos were taken during the setup process.  So not all elements are in the photos.

One thing that Shane and Dylan really had fun playing with was the web shooter that we bought.  They webbed up the mausoleum and it looks really cool at night.  I’ll post pictures tomorrow.

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.

So this weekend Dylan finished up editing the Save the Date teaser:

Halloween Date Teaser

He did a great job!

That’s pretty much what got accomplished other than finalizing the plan for the walk through in the garage on Halloween night and going over to the Resource Recycle place and getting two cool old chairs with claw feet and a cool old door as props – all for $30.

We did go over to Spirit Halloween while in Boulder, but nothing seems to entice us any longer.  All we walked out of there with was vampire fangs for Dylan and a bottle of latex for Shane for some mask he is going to do.  Although that place is expensive so it’s a good thing that’s all we left with!